Top 1200 Writing Nonfiction Quotes & Sayings - Page 4

I still believe nonfiction is the most important literature to come out of the second half of the 20th century.

I'm more of a songwriter. I love writing songs. I love writing my songs. It's always been writing for me, and it makes it different when you're writing for yourself.

I believe every time you film anybody, you create reality with that person - whether it's fiction or nonfiction.

I vicariously lived the life of an independent producer from the time I was four years old. And what was always important was writing, writing, writing.

The process of re-writing and writing and re-writing means that you may have a brilliant phrase, but over time it distills and distorts and changes.

My entire career, in fiction or nonfiction, I have reported and written about people who are not like me.

For me, most of the anxiety and difficulty of writing takes place in the act of not writing. It's the procrastination, the thinking about writing that's difficult.

I enjoy doing the research of nonfiction; that gives me some pleasure, being a detective again.

Most of the time, you're writing for radio, you're writing for a label, you're writing to stick a hit, and you end up coming out with something that isn't necessarily genuine.

I was very in my own head as a kid. But I liked it there! I was just writing poetry, writing stories, writing plays. I think I was quite strange. But I was happy.

When you start reading nonfiction books about piracy, you realize that it's actually just a history of desperate people.

I'm drawn to fiction that hints at nonfiction, that blurs or seems to blur the boundaries between invention and autobiography.

I always want to read Gore Vidal's nonfiction. Because everything he writes is an essay and it's worth reading.

Every time I get through the work on a book of nonfiction, I say I'll never do it again; it takes so much out of you.

The secret to writing is just to write. Write every day. Never stop writing. Write on every surface you see; write on people on the street. When the cops come to arrest you, write on the cops. Write on the police car. Write on the judge. I'm in jail forever now, and the prison cell walls are completely covered with my writing, and I keep writing on the writing I wrote. That's my method.

People think that writing is writing, but actually writing is editing. Otherwise, you're just taking notes

The nonfiction novel or literary memoir as authored by women is usually given a much harder time in mainstream criticism.

Nobody told all the new e-mail writers that the essence of writing is rewriting. Just because they are writing with ease and enjoyment doesn't mean they are writing well.

Writing fiction is very different to writing non-fiction. I love writing novels, but on history books, like my biographies of Stalin or Catherine the Great or Jerusalem, I spend endless hours doing vast amounts of research. But it ends up being based on the same principle as all writing about people: and that is curiosity!

I like to get paid for doing basic research, so it's pleasant to write some nonfiction about it.

I really like writing for specific projects. It's a whole different way of writing when you have certain guidelines and a theme you're writing to. It's very inspiring.

I don’t even know what I’m writing, I have no idea, I don’t know anything, and I’m not reading over it, and I’m not correcting my style, and I’m writing just for the sake of writing, just for the sake of writing more to you… My precious, my darling, my dearest!

There is so much about the process of writing that is mysterious to me, but this one thing I've found to be true: writing begets writing.

I enjoyed writing in school. I don't know that I was all that good at it in school. I worked at it later. I feel comfortable writing now. I enjoy writing now. I suspect, like most college students, I viewed writing then to be more tedious.

When it comes to sermon writing, generally there are two problems. Some preachers love the research stage but hate the writing, and they start writing too late. Others don't like doing research, so they move way too fast to the writing part.

I think one of the reasons that I like fiction versus nonfiction is that I myself can kind of disappear from the story.

I went to Marion College for writing and I was kicked out of the writing school. I was asked to leave the writing program because I was corrupting the other students.

If there's anything I'm keen to get better at in my writing, then it's the writing of prose as opposed to the writing of dialogue.

What I don't like is constructing a book that fits in with any kind of generic template, whether it's fiction or nonfiction.

I never stopped writing. I started writing when I was twelve years of age. And I was writing all the time. But nothing was translated until thirty years after I started writing, when The Hidden Face of Eve was translated in 1980.

It is a singular reaction, this sitting still and writing, writing, writing, or ruminating at length, which is much the same, really.

I always tell audiences when I talk about writing: Writing isn't something I do; writing is something that I am. I am writing - it's just an expression of me.

Most of the time you're writing for radio, you're writing for a label, you're writing to stick a hit, and you end up coming out with something that isn't necessarily genuine.

I figure I wrote 37 songs in 20 years, and that's not exactly a full-time job. It wasn't that I was writing and writing and writing and quit.

Writing, for me, when I'm writing in the first-person, is like a form of acting. So as I'm writing, the character or self I'm writing about and my whole self - when I began the book - become entwined. It's soon hard to tell them apart. The voice I'm trying to explore directs my own perceptions and thoughts.

The truth is that every writer, whether it's fiction or nonfiction, is trying to write something truly original and that's what I think I'm doing.

For me, choosing between fiction and nonfiction is really only about picking the right tool for the job.

One important idea I hope is reflected in 'The Poe Shadow' is that fiction can add as much to history as nonfiction does.

Whether it's writing a monologue or writing standup or writing a screenplay or writing a play, I think staying involved in the creation of your own work empowers you in a way, even if you don't ever do it. It gives you a sense of ownership and a sense of purpose, which I think as an actor is really important.

The funny thing is that in Bosnia there are no words that are equivalent to fiction and nonfiction. From the storytelling point of view, the difference is artificial.

As a writer who writes poetry, nonfiction, and fiction, I think it's important to always maintain a firm grasp on genre and ethics.

I approach writing a poem in a much different state than when I am writing prose. It's almost as if I were working in a different language when I'm writing poetry. The words - what they are and what they can become - the possibilities of the words are vastly expanded for me when I'm writing a poem.

I've always been a person that thinks nonfiction is more interesting than fiction, I love to read presidential biographies.

Writing for adults and writing for young people is really not that different. As a reporter, I have always tried to write as clearly and simply as possible. I like clean, unadorned writing. So writing for a younger audience was largely an exercise in making my prose even more clear and direct, and in avoiding complicated digressions.

I think that writers are best served by sticking to their writing. Not having loads of theories about the best way to position the writing. I think that if the writing is good and the point of view is strong, the writing is going to take care of itself.

If you have to find devices to coax yourself to stay focused on writing, perhaps you should not be writing what you're writing. And if this lack of motivation is a constant problem, perhaps writing is not your forte. I mean, what is the problem? If writing bores you, that is pretty fatal. If that is not the case, but you find that it is hard going and it just doesn't flow, well, what did you expect? It is work; art is work.

If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write, because our culture has no use for it.

I love writing. I never feel really comfortable unless I am either actually writing or have a story going. I could not stop writing.

Writing has to do with truth-telling. When you're writing, let's say, an essay for a magazine, you try to tell the truth at every moment. You do your best to quote people accurately and get everything right. Writing a novel is a break from that: freedom. When you're writing a novel, you are in charge; you can beef things up.

Nonfiction means that our stories are as true and accurate as possible. Readers expect - demand - diligence.

Writing is a key differentiator. I've used it for 14 years. Writing will not just lead to differentiation. Writing is the credibility you need to create buyer confidence

I don't actually have a one wellspring of inspiration. Though I'm most often inspired while reading - both fiction and nonfiction.

One of the things I had to learn as a writer was to trust the act of writing. To put myself in the position of writing to find out what I was writing.

I have to say that writing about my writing process is more daunting than writing non-fiction.

Actually, I've taught creative writing in Turkey, at an English language university, where the students were native Turkish speakers, but they were writing their essays in English, and they were very interesting - even the sense of structure, the conventions of writing, the different styles of writing.

Nonfiction that uses novelistic devices and strategies to shape the work. That's material that I really like.

Nonfiction requires enormous discipline. You construct the terms of your story, and then you stick to them.

A lot of my nonfiction is very strong environmental stories - I was the first guy to write about the dolphin killings in Japan.

Writing can come naturally to some. Still, when it comes to good writing, this is true: Easy reading is damn hard writing.

Right now-whether you're in writing courses getting "paid" in credit for writing, or burdened and distracted by earning a living and changing diapers-figure out how to make writing an integral part of your life. Publication is good, and gives you the courage to go on, but publication is not as important as the act of writing.