Quotation Saturday

CREATIVITY

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.
-Scott Adams
 

All writing is a process of elimination.
-Martha Albrand
 

It doesn't matter if a student looks as sour as a lemon. You get lemonade by squeezing them.
-Antti Allén
 

There is no great writing, only great rewriting.
-Justice Brandeis
 

Short stories are designed to deliver their impact in as few pages as possible. A tremendous amount is left out, and a good short story writer learns to include only the most essential information.
-Orson Scott Card
 

EMOTIONS in WRITING

The writer who cares more about words than about story – characters, action, setting, atmosphere – is unlikely to create a vivid and continuous dream; he gets in his own way too much; in his poetic drunkenness, he can't tell the cart – and its cargo – from the horse.
-John Gardner
 

We read five words on the first page of a really good novel and we begin to forget that we are reading printed words on a page; we begin to see images.
-John Gardner
 

It's better to write about things you feel than about things you know about.
-L P. Hartley
 

If you do not have an alert and curious interest in character and dramatic situation, if you have no visual imagination and are unable to distinguish between honest emotional reactions and sentimental approaches to life, you will never write a competent short story.
-Edward J. O'Brien
 

DREAMS

The end of wisdom is to dream high enough not to lose the dream in the seeking of it.
-William Faulkner
 

I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.
-Patrick Henry
 

Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly.
-Lanston Hughes
 

You cannot dream yourself into a character: you must hammer and forge yourself into one.
-Henry D. Thoreau