QUOTATIONS FROM WRITERS
Find quotations on writing that relate
to the trait or concept that is the focus of your lesson. Use
quotations from writers that the students will recognize. Use the
quotations on handouts or on posters. It does make an impact when
student writers can see what accomplished writers have to say
about their craft.
Below I have provided some quotations
categorized by subject. I have also included the author and some
of his/her works.
 | "When I'm looking for an idea, I'll do
anything--clean the closet, mow the lawn, work in the
garden."
 | by Kevin Henkes
 | author of
Chrysanthemum
as well as others |
|
|
| "Ideas are the cheapest part of the writing.
They are free. The hard part is what you do with ideas
you've gathered."
| by Jane Yolen
| author of
Owl
Moon and Sleeping
Ugly as well as
others |
|
|
| "It's like a bird-watcher watching for
birds: The stories are there: you just have to train
yourself to look for them."
| by Barbara Micheals
| author of
The
Wizard's Daughter
and Black Rainbow as
well as others |
|
|
| "Push yourself to try new things--it will
make you a better writer."
| by Deborah Nourse Lattimore
| author of
The
Dragon's Robe and The
Winged Cat as well
as others |
|
|
| "I take my ideas from my experiences." |
| "Once I have the idea for a story. I start
collecting all kinds of helpful information and storing
it in three-ring notebooks. For example, I may see a
picture of a man in a magazine and say, 'That's exactly
what the father in my book looks like!'...I save
everything that will help--maps, articles, hand-jotted
notes, bits of dialogue from conversations that I
overhear."
| by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
| author of
Shiloh
as well as others |
|
|
| "The golden rule of writing is to write what
you care about. If you care about your topic, you'll do
your best writing, and then you stand the best chance of
really touching a reader in some way."
| by Jerry Spinelli
| author of
Maniac
Magee and Fourth
Grade Rats as well
as others |
|
|
| "Try drawing or painting a scene you're
working on. Often this will help free up you
imagination."
| by Kevin Henkes
| author of
Chrysanthemum
as well as others |
|
|
| "I think writer's block is simply the dread
that you are going to write something horrible. But as a
writer, I believe that if you sit down at the keys long
enough, sooner or later something will come out."
| by Roy Blount, Jr.
| author of
Crackers
and One Fell Soup
as well as others |
|
|
| "Work extra hard on the beginning of your
story, so it snares readers instantly. And know how
you're going to end your story before you start writing; without a sense of direction, you can get lost in
the middle."
| by Joan Lowery Nixon
| author of
The
Kidnapping of Christina Lattimore
and The Other Side of
Dark as well as
others |
|
|
| "Eventually you won't be thinking about
style very much at all. Style will be a word that other
people use to describe words that have come to you, and
words you have spent time seeking to make your characters
live their visible and invisible lives."
| by John Casey
| author of
Spartina
and An American
Romance as well as
others |
|
|
| "As a writer, you're obligated to draw
readers into your world, and if your writing isn't
interesting to them, you won't succeed."
| by Donald Perry
| free lance writer and author of
Life
Above the Jungle Floor |
|
|
| "...figurative language adds
pizzazz. It
raises work above the plain, the dull, the
ordinary." |
| "The concrete is better than the abstract.
The detail is better than the commonplace. The sensual
[through the senses] is better than the intellectual. The
visual is better than the mental."
| by Ellen Hunnicutt
| author of
Suite
for Calliope as well
as others |
|
|
| "I think what's really hard is making sense
and making what you write clear and smooth-flowing."
| by Roy Blount, Jr.
| author of
Crackers and One Fell Soup
as well as others |
|
|
| "The writing for me is hard work and I
always look forward to drawing the pictures."
| by Marc Brown
| author of the
Arthur
books as well as others |
|
|
| "Published writers still struggle with the
writing process."
| by Laurence Pringle
| author of
Dinosaurs:
Strange and Wonderful
as well as others |
|
|
| "If you do all that work of figuring out
exactly how writing is done, then it's available to you
at anytime, and you can build on it. It's like the
difference between shooting one hoop and having it go in
by accident and saying later, 'I shot a basket,'--and
practicing so much you can do it whenever you want."
| by Mark Salzman
| author of
Iron
and Silk and The
Laughing Sutra |
|
|
| "The only way to do it is to do it: by
writing, writing, writing."
| by Barbara Michaels
| author of
Ammie,
Come Home and The
Wizard's Daughter as
well as others |
|
|
| "Write, write, and write some more. Think of
writing as a muscle that needs lots of exercise." |
| You're never going to be a writer unless you
write. You have to sit down and write."
| by Jane Yolen
| author of
Owl
Moon and Sleeping
Ugly as well as
others |
|
|
| "Some of the best writing comes when you
rehash. It's in the retelling of stories that the
improvement comes. I compare it to preparing a lens for a
telescope. For months, all you're doing is grinding it
into the generalized shape of what a lens should be. Once
the rough-cut bowl is formed, it's not going to reflect
an image. In writing you can have your skeleton, you're structure, but it doesn't reflect. The reflection comes
in the polish. What a person will see, what a person will
feel, comes in the polish. When you finish polishing your
writing, it forms the image you're trying to
create."
| by Donald Perry
| free lance writer and author of
Above
the Jungle Floor |
|
|
| "The first draft is a skeleton--just bare
bones. It's like the very first rehearsal of a play,
where the director moves the actors around mechanically
to get a feel of the action. Characters talk without
expression. In the second draft, I know where my
characters are going, just as the director knows where
his actors will move on the stage. But it's still rough
and a little painful to read. By the third draft, the
whole thing is taking shape. I have enough glimmers from
the second draft to know exactly what I want to say.
There may be two or three more drafts after the third to
polish it up. But the third is the one where it all comes
together for me."
| by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
| author of
Shiloh
as well as others |
|
|
| "I rewrite a great deal. I'm always
fiddling, always changing something. I'll write a few
words--then I'll change them. I add. I subtract. I work
and fiddle and keep working and fiddling, and I only stop
at the deadline."
| by Ellen Goodman
| Pulitzer Prize winning columnist
and author of Turning
Points |
|
|
| "Revision plays a very large role in
writing. Sometimes it seems to be all revision. And the
longer I write, the more I revise--and it's never
completely right."
| by Ellen Hunnicutt
| author of
Suite
for Calliope as well
as others |
|
|
| "Try not to become disappointed if someone
doesn't like a story you've written. Stick up for your
ideas, but listen to what other people say, too. They
might have good advice."
| by Margaret Mahy
| author of
Nonstop
Nonsense and Fortunate
Family Gang as well
as others |
|
|
| "When you write...some things that come very
late in the creation change what you were conceiving back
when you started. Therefore, you have to go back and
revise." |
| "Revision is very important to me. I just
can't abide some things that I write. I look at them the
next day and they're terrible. They don't make sense, or
they're awkward, or they're not to the point--so I have
to revise, cut, shape. Sometimes I throw the whole thing
away and start from scratch."
| by William Kennedy
| author of
Ironweed
and Very Old Bones
as well as others |
|
|
| "I'm a rewriter. That's the part I like
best...once I have a pile of paper to work with, it's
like having the pieces of a puzzle. I just have to put
the pieces together to make a picture."
| by Judy Blume
| author of
Tales
of a Fourth Grade Nothing
and Fudgemania
as well as others |
|
|
|
Quotations About Writer's Block
