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Robin McKinley48
American fantasy writer 1952Related quotes
“In the writing process, the more the story cooks, the better.”
Doris Lessing (1919–2013) British novelist, poet, playwright, librettist, biographer and short story writer
Interview with Herbert Mitgang, "Mrs. Lessing Addresses Some of Life's Puzzles," The New York Times, (22 April 1984) http://www.nytimes.com/books/99/01/10/specials/lessing-puzzles.html <br class="br">Context: In the writing process, the more the story cooks, the better. The brain works for you even when you are at rest. I find dreams particularly useful. I myself think a great deal before I go to sleep and the details sometimes unfold in the dream.
Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale
Source: The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), Chapter 7 (pp. 39-40)
Source: The Handmaid's Tale
Katherine Mansfield (1888–1923) New Zealand author
Journal entry (July 1922), published in The Journal of Katherine Mansfield (1927)
Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist
Variant: You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should've behaved better.
Source: Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) American author
In Pursuit of Valis: Selections from the Exegesis (1991)
Context: I am a fictionalizing philosopher, not a novelist; my novel and story-writing ability is employed as a means to formulate my perception. The core of my writing is not art but truth. Thus what I tell is the truth, yet I can do nothing to alleviate it, either by deed or explanation. Yet this seems somehow to help a certain kind of sensitive troubled person, for whom I speak. I think I understand the common ingredient in those whom my writing helps: they cannot or will not blunt their own intimations about the irrational, mysterious nature of reality, and, for them, my corpus of writing is one long ratiocination regarding this inexplicable reality, an investigation and presentation, analysis and response and personal history. My audience will always be limited to those people.
“Write what you know, and what do you know better than your own secrets?”
Raymond Carver (1938–1988) American short story author and poet
“When you write a short story … you had better know the ending first.”
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …
The Casebook of the Black Widowers (1980), p. 177
General sources
Context: When you write a short story... you had better know the ending first. The end of a story is only the end to the reader. To the writer, it's the beginning. If you don't know exactly where you're going every minute you're writing, you'll never get there — or anywhere.
Joe Strummer (1952–2002) British musician, singer, actor and songwriter
About punk.
Joe Strummer: Putting a Scare into he Hearts of All Things Corporate (2002)