66 Quotes About Good-writing

He wrote as if he were the reader. It was also how he kept his writing from becoming too cute, which is to say, about him not the subject. Rook was a journalist but strove to be a storyteller, one who let his subjects speak for themselves and stayed out of their way as much as possible.

Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader--not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.

...Mr. Wegg sits down on a box in front of the fire, and inhales a warm and comfortable smell which is not the smell of the shop. 'For that,' Mr. Wegg inwardly decides, as he takes a corrective sniff or two, 'is musty, leathery, feathery, cellary, gluey, gummy, and,' with another sniff, 'as it might be, strong of old pairs of bellows.

... a slipstream of darkness so complete it helps illuminate the evening sky. It's like somebody dropped a dome over the ocean & lit it up with Christmas lights. ...Sans moon, Norfolk is wrapped in a mantle of pure, unadulterated blackness, leaving the stars to twinkle in harmony above. It thoroughly disorientates me.

.. they look like they've escaped from a nursing home. Everywhere I turn I see puffy skin & radiant expressions, crinkles & pearls, broad smiles & high hair... Collectively they all lean forward, like bamboo in the wind. Their postures may be cruelled by age but their excitement is adolescent. Cackling & wheezing with laughter the elderly hordes squeeze into the waiting vans & shuffle about...

The swordmaiden wears her loyalty like a necklace of dead stars. Their worth is eternal, although they no longer shine.

I refuse to let you build your house on such shiftless & ureal sand.

The love in a marriage turns like the lamp in a lighthouse, leaving you in darkness for long stretches, but it always comes back. I believe that but I can't tell whether it is a thought or a quotation.

Belief and reader absorption come in the details: An overturned tricycle in the gutter of an abandoned neighborhood can stand for everything. - Stephen King