A Quote by Amy Hempel

I do feel that if you can write one good sentence and then another good sentence and then another, you end up with a good story.

Amy Hempel

Quote Topics

Another End Feel Good Good Story Sentence Story Then Up Write

Quote Author

Amy Hempel
American - Writer
Born: December 14, 1951

Write one good clean sentence and put a period at the end of it. Then write another one.

M. F. K. Fisher

The first draft of everything, I write longhand. One of the nice things about that is that it makes you keep going. If you write a bad sentence on the computer, then it's very tempting to go back and fidget with it and spend another 20 minutes trying to make it into a good sentence.

Jonathan Dee

I turn sentences around. That's my life. I write a sentence and then I turn it around. Then I look at it and I turn it around again. Then I have lunch. Then I come back in and write another sentence. Then I have tea and turn the new sentence around. Then I read the two sentences over and turn them both around. Then I lie down on my sofa and think. Then I get up and throw them out and start from the beginning.

Philip Roth

Jonathan Dee

What separates the professionally successful ... from all the rest is their ability to stay steady, to have stamina. It is one thing to write a good sentence, another to write a good book.

Katy Lederer

It's definitely about the rhythm of the words and how they sound together, writing one sentence and then another and another and cutting something immediately if it doesn't feel true. I come from a family of musicians and - while I have no musical abilities of my own - I think I inherited a good ear.

Mary J. Miller

What you feel when you're writing is the relief of thinking: if you write the sentence correctly, you're clarifying. If you write the right sentence, nothing feels as good.

Vivian Gornick

It is one thing to write a good sentence, another to write a good book.

Katy Lederer

It takes me six months to do a story. I think it out and then write it sentence by sentence - no first draft. I can't write five words but that I change seven.

Dorothy Parker

There is nothing more satisfying than having a sentence fall into place in a way you feel is right, and then adding another one and then another one. It's extraordinarily satisfying.

Yann Martel

I never thought for one minute that I couldn't win another tournament or I couldn't make another Ryder Cup team. That's not in my make-up. If I feel good in myself and feel good in everything I'm doing, on and off the course, then I'm of the mind-set that I can get it done.

Ian Poulter

I write first drafts feverishly fast, and then I spend years editing. It's not that sentence-by-sentence perfectionist technique some writers I admire use. I need to see the thing, in some form, and then work with it over and over and over until it makes sense to me - until its concerns approach me, until its themes come to my attention. At that editing stage, the story picks itself and it's just up to me to see it, to find it. If I've done a good job, what it all means will force me to confront it in further edits.

Porochista Khakpour

But sometimes when I was starting a new story and I could not get it going, I would sit in front of the fire and squeeze the peel of the little oranges into the edge of the flame and watch the sputter of blue that they made. I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, 'Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.' So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there.

Ernest Hemingway

If you are stymied as a writer, if it's just not coming together, then take the pressure off and don't feel that you need to write 1,000 words today; just write one really good sentence.

Chris Bohjalian

I usually start writing a novel that I then abandon. When I say abandon, I don't think any writer ever abandons anything that they regard as even a half-good sentence. So you recycle. I mean, I can hang on to a sentence for several years and then put it into a book that's completely different from the one it started in.