Share your favorite writing quotes

[T.Allen.Smith]

What are some writing quotes that inspire you, keep you focused, or just plain amuse you?

Here are a few of my favorites:

"Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass" - Anton Chekov

"Writing is most of all an exercise in determination." - Tom Clancy

"The road to hell is paved with adverbs." - Stephen King

 

[Steerpike]

"Time and space, the colors of the seasons, the movements of muscles and minds, all these are for writers of genius (as far as we can guess and I trust we guess right) not traditional notions which may be borrowed from the circulating library of public truths but a series of unique surprises which master artists have learned to express in their own unique way. To minor authors is left the ornamentation of the commonplace: these do not bother about any reinventing of the world; they merely try to squeeze the best they can out of a given order of things, out of traditional patterns of fiction."

-Vladimir Nabokov

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

"Time and space, the colors of the seasons, the movements of muscles and minds, all these are for writers of genius (as far as we can guess and I trust we guess right) not traditional notions which may be borrowed from the circulating library of public truths but a series of unique surprises which master artists have learned to express in their own unique way. To minor authors is left the ornamentation of the commonplace: these do not bother about any reinventing of the world; they merely try to squeeze the best they can out of a given order of things, out of traditional patterns of fiction."

-Vladimir Nabokov

Pretty deep...

 

[Steerpike]

Pretty deep...

Hard to beat Nabokov. The first time I read Lolita I was astounded, and it is one of the few books I've re-read.

 

[Sheilawisz]

"The most important part of creating a Fantasy world, is knowing what your characters cannot do." - J.K. Rowling

I cannot remember exactly when and where she said that, but she did and I believe that she's absolutely right about that... I have moved this thread to the Chit Chat Forum because it does not ask a question relevant to the Writing Questions Forum.

 

[SlimShady]

"Neither man nor God is going to tell me what to write."
-James T. Farrell

"It seems to me that many writers, by virtue of environments of culture, art and education, slip into writing because of their environments."
-Robert E. Howard

 

[Androxine Vortex]

"Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite."
C.S. Lewis

This was actually my High School Senior quote XD