A Quote by Philip Roth

I often have to write a hundred pages or more before there's a paragraph that's alive.

Philip Roth

Quote Topics

Alive Before Hundred More Often Pages Paragraph Write

Quote Author

Philip Roth
American - Novelist
March 19, 1933 - May 22, 2018

There is a difference between a book of two hundred pages from the very beginning, and a book of two hundred pages which is the result of an original eight hundred pages. The six hundred are there. Only you don't see them.

Elie Wiesel

When I'm writing a script, before I can write dialogue or anything, I have two or three hundred pages of notes, which takes me a year. So, it's not like "what happens next." I've got things that I'm thinking about but I don't settle on them. And if I try to write dialogue before then, I can't. It's just garbage.

Charlie Kaufman

Whenever I teach writing I tell them to never revise as you go. Finish the first draft. This is my writing advice. I can't do that myself. I'm lying to everybody. I write a paragraph, and then I rewrite that paragraph. I want to feel like I'm standing on firm ground before I move on to the next paragraph. Mentally, I have to do that.

Matt de la Pena

I always tell my students to go back after a hundred pages and rewrite from the beginning. It's really harder if you've already finished four hundred pages and realize the first hundred aren't working.

Yiyun Li

My experience as a writer is that you really do write seven and eight pages to find the paragraph you were after all along.

Anne Lamott

Having imagination, it takes you an hour to write a paragraph that, if you were unimaginative, would take you only a minute. Or you might not write the paragraph at all.

Franklin P. Adams

Beginning a novel is always hard. It feels like going nowhere. I always have to write at least 100 pages that go into the trashcan before it finally begins to work. It's discouraging, but necessary to write those pages. I try to consider them pages -100 to zero of the novel.

Barbara Kingsolver

During my last year of college I wrote the same ten pages over and over again. Those ten pages became the first few pages of my first novel. I can still recite the opening paragraph from memory - only now I cringe when I do it because they are - surprise! - a classic example of overwriting, in addition to being a more than a little pretentious.

Patricia Briggs

The first paragraph. The last paragraph. That's where the story is going and how it's going to end. Or else you'll go off in a hundred different directions.

Hunter S. Thompson

You don't write a book. You write a sentence and then a paragraph and then a page and then a chapter. Looking at writing 400 plus pages or seventy thousand odd words is incredibly daunting, but if you just focus on the immediate picture - say, 500 words - it's not so overwhelming.

Rebecca Serle

I'll write maybe one long paragraph describing the events, then a page or two breaking the events into chapters, and then reams of pages delving into my characters. After that, I'm ready to begin.

Anne Tyler

I'll write maybe one long paragraph describing the events, then a page or two breaking the events into chapters, and then reams of pages delving into my characters. After that, I'm ready to begin

Anne Tyler

When I was in high school, I had a notebook that I filled up with rules about lying. It must have been a hundred pages long - one hundred pages of rules about lying!

Jesse Ball

I am terribly interested in the paragraph: the paragraph as an object, the construction, and the possibilities of what a paragraph can do.

Hisham Matar

I write two pages - that's all I write. It takes me about an hour. I've learned that's all I'm capable of and to push myself beyond that is foolhardy. It's a very delicate thing, and I will not abuse it. So I write two pages, then I get up from the computer.

Kate DiCamillo

I felt him there with me. The real David. My David. David, you are still here. Alive. Alive in me.Alive in the galaxy.Alive in the stars.Alive in the sky.Alive in the sea.Alive in the palm trees.Alive in feathers.Alive in birds.Alive in the mountains.Alive in the coyotes.Alive in books.Alive in sound.Alive in mom.Alive in dad.Alive in Bobby.Alive in me.Alive in soil.Alive in branches.Alive in fossils.Alive in tongues.Alive in eyes.Alive in cries.Alive in bodies.Alive in past, present and future. Alive forever.

Kelly Easton

A Quote by Philip Roth

Quote Topics

Quote Author

Related Quotes

Related Authors