Writers On Writing Books Quotes

“I can't kill myself, yet, therefore I write.”
― Abhaidev, The Meaninglessness of Meaning

“Writing enables a person to build a protective barrier shielding them from an adverse environment, scrutinize their circumstances, and discover how to employ new perceptions to center oneself in a world filled with strife, conflict, violence, affection, beauty, splendor.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“A person can internalize their expressible thoughts and employ such ideas to modify human behavior.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“A writer toils to combat the insufficiency plaguing his or her life. Every writer seeks to ward off the corrosive obliteration wrought by the passage of time upon memory by capturing on paper his or her present day thoughts on life. For these intrepid souls, writing not only entails a lifetime of work it also represents their very lifeblood spilled out onto sheets of virgin white paper. Writers’ inkblot of words forms a pictograph for present and future generations to view; their thoughtful elucidations speak to us from the grave. Writers’ words transcend time by creating indelible images that survive wars, famines, epidemics, and censorship. Thanks to great writers, every man, woman, or child can escape the confines of their own cloistered environment and converse with other people of every occupation and lifestyle whose communal heartbeats form the bloodstream of every city. Thanks to literary figures, each reader can peer into the depths of past generations whose eclectic filament forms the ever-evolving equitable eye in humankinds’ collective consciousness, or colloquially what we refer to as humanity.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“Writing allows us to exploit the synergistic dynamics of the human brain including memory, the ability to engage in constructive research, visually scrutinize our private thoughts, and discuss and share an evolving linkwork of thoughts with other people.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“Writers do not always deliberately choose to write about a particular subject or develop select themes; rather the topic and the resultant work product frequently effuse from their pores. I work in an aimless fashion, similar to how a rudderless vessel steers no deliberate course. When the muse grabs us by the throat and makes us speak for it, we cannot question the wisdom behind the message generated by isolated sentences and paragraphs, elect to decipher sequestered ideas, or equivocate with the emotive utterings made while standing alone in the coldness of the night. All we can do is hold a lantern up to the self and take dictation. Later when our muse slumbers, we can evaluate the written scribbling for the resultant collective punch.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“Each act of writing represents a separate lock of the author’s tissue and all serious piecework folds into an ongoing anthology. A writer’s portfolio is comprised of interlocking ideas that are in a constant state of change. A writer’s ideas gradually reflect their current mental and spiritual composition and a writer’s way of living reflects the progression of their ideas. Each written version of a person’s life stands as mental testament of who the author was at a given moment in time. Just as we cannot sum up a person’s life with an isolated snapshot, truly to understand who a writer was we must read his or her entire body of work. No single work of writing tells us who the writer was. The compilation of a writer’s scripts defines the shady author, even if some of these works overtake, correct, or contradict previous efforts. Who we are is the summation of who we were as a child, teenager, young adult, in middle age, and as an elder. Only by viewing a person in successive stages do we truly comprehend them. Only by reading the oeuvre of an author, do we appreciate the writer’s ultimate act of creation. Only by reading a person’s obituary do we come to know what their living Magnus opus stood for.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“You should never write about
what the world wants to read -
instead, write about
everything you want the world to read.”
― Laura Chouette

“Omit needless words! Omit needless words! Omit needless words!”
― E.B. White

“No paper is ever finished to an author’s satisfaction. External circumstances and internal limitations conspire to terminate the work. The writer stops pounding out text and ceases tinkering with words when one comes to a point of diminishing returns and/or an urgent need to move forward forces an abandonment of the work.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“A writer always questions their primary motive to commence placing thoughts and recollections onto paper because many factors urge the writer to begin and an equal number rivaling factors implore them to quit.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“Educational personal experiences are seldom the result of efficient enterprises and pleasant occurrences. Personal growth does not entail doing what we find easy or financially profitable. What defines us is not exclusively our natural talent, but also our willingness to go outside ourselves to scramble, discern, locate, and acquire what is heretofore missing in our lives. A person who dares tread the ground that they most fear is an intrepid explorer regardless of the final economic result attained.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“Does your mind endlessly feel like an outcast in a fog of noise? Try typing something. Anything. If that noise stops, you're a writer.”
― A.K. Kuykendall

“Writing induces a person to work exclusively to expand his or her knowledge, follow their ideas, and remain aloofly unconcerned of earning the approval or scorn of other people.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“My charter is to examine my egoistical self and alter my being by placing on paper whatever rests inside of me. I seek to develop a cohesive philosophy for living – and for dying – that is spiritually nourishing by dichotomizing the events in life that formed me. I aspire to discover an authentic core that will guide me through a physical world where human thoughts and deeds deepen our lives. Just as a flower must bud, every person feels in his or her marrow the need to express what it means to be human. Unlike a flower, which we perceive as a singular iridescent unit of material reality, we tend to perceive oneself as containing interlacement of multitudes, an array of interlaced voices.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“It is my desire to explore as carefully as I can the tensions, absurdities, and ironies in every dimension of human existence. I aspire to delve a functional manner of living in a world where humankind is aware of their mortality, exhibits a degree of freewill to make fundamental decisions how to live in society or in isolation, and can use art to blunt the existential meaningless of living in an absurd world of infinite time and space. This scroll tells of all my heartaches, sorrows, desires and all the disjointed and inconsistent thoughts that passed through my mind as I attempted to wring the beauty and joy from living an all too human of an existence. This scroll represents an effort to rise above the sunken feelings of the past, develop an ethical base, create a mindset that can exist peacefully in solitude in the twilight hours far away from the white noise of society, and be immune to the petty indulgences of people whom stir up strife.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“Finishing large projects can result in a mild or severe thud of depression. The scariest part about completing any demanding project is that irrespective of how exhausting the labor might be the work also arrests a person’s attention. Working passionately is akin to a person consenting to a kidnaping. A person engaged in performing a princely task feels whisked away on a captivating voyage of undetermined final destination. At times, I wondered if the only thing that actually kept me going is the work of crafting sentences. Writing sentences is contagious. Finishing a sentence infects a person with a desire to write another sentence. The feverish rash of writing spread until it consumed all my resources. Once I stop writing, I will need to find a new reason to awaken each day.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“Reflecting on the past while living in the present, we make decisions that will reverberate in the future. Our daily actions, thought patterns, and the concepts we choose to cherish will create the paradigmatic structure of our life story; our collective decision-making determines our final manifestation.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“Writing evidences a contrarian mind at work. Writing is reflective of a mind’s evolving picture book. Each sentence forms part of a collage charting the meanderings of a mind unraveling. Writing represents drawing and quartering a mind. No wonder writing is an exercise of sheer torment. Only the exhaustive is truly fascinating. All worthwhile writing must be dangerous for the author if its concussive impact is to serve as a catalyst for change. Stories designed solely to shock are phony and, therefore, remain unconvincing since they fail to reveal a transformative philosophy. Unless we feel a strong connection to the story, a book is merely cheap talk. Transformative stories must surprise both the author and the reader by capturing ineffable feelings that exist beyond words.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“Artistic license, also known poetic license, narrative license, and licentiate poetical, is a colloquial term (employed occasionally as a euphemism), which denotes a license to distort the facts, alter the conventions of grammar or language, or reword pre-existing text by an artist in the name of art. Liberal usage of an artistic license to restructure basic facts can result because of conscious or unconscious acts. Artistic embellishment or misrepresentation of the facts and distortion or alteration of the compositional text frequently is the by-product of both intentional and unintentional additions and omissions. An artistic license, employed at an artist’s discretion to fill in details or gloss over factual and historical gaps, raises some ethical issues. Many stories retold verbatim would bore an audience or require inordinate time and resources to reenact, describe, and view. A dramatic license eliminates mundane details and tedious facts, spruces up the picturesque background, and glamorizes the characters’ temperament and action scenes. Is it wrong to be inventive with the facts? What degree of embroidery of a series of events and the characters’ mannerisms and attributes is acceptable? How can anyone paste together a set of facts into an interesting or compelling narrative that has literary value without engaging in some creative organization to enhance the theatrical retelling and to create juxtaposition of ideas and values?”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“Writing is an engagement with the text and with the author’s enigmatic thoughts. Our words strung together eventually cause us to change, giving light to the new language and colorful pallet of our soul.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“A myriad of reasons contribute to writer’s block including anxiety, neurological impediments associated with the fight or flight concept, life changes of the writer, fear of rejection, fatigue, illness, sleep deprivation, mood disorders, drug or alcohol abuse, lack of inspiration, distraction by pressing events, and other diversionary interests.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“I hope to address and satisfactorily answer a number of issues throughout this scroll, namely, how I should elect to live out the remainder of my life. What qualities should I incorporate into my personhood and what noxious characteristics must I jettison from an evolving personal character? Questions that establish the spine of this scroll include does a person need the bookends of both faith and hope to bracket personal survival? Should I take a vow of poverty, chastity, and public service, and seek to live an honorable life based upon the principles of loyalty and courage? Must a person clasp vivid dreams close to their heart? Must a person stalk their personal calling with all their ferocity and resolve to hang onto the slender stalk of wispy wishes with all their might? Alternatively, should a person resolve to accept a life free from all forms of wanting? Can I discover a way to live in a supple way? Should I invest diminishing personal resources into self-discovery? Should I intensely search out the tenderest spot in my being? Do I dare plunge into the affectionate pulse that fills my innermost cavities with glowing warmth towards humanity? Given that death is inevitable, should I disdain failure, because how can anyone fail at living while pursuing the beam cast by the interior flash of their incandescent light? While many of these questions might prove elusive or unanswerable, the act of questioning has independent value.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“The mythic resonance gleaned from stories exploring the infinite permutations of the human condition saturates the universal stream of consciousness, creating an interlinked constellation of our imbued voices trilling the full range of human feeling and experience.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“A writer is chosen by the universe to be the architect of the next generation.”
― Avijeet Das

“As a human race are we falling down on our creative minds. Is it only visual effects and spectacle that attract people and not the vivid imagination that is needed to read and enjoy a book?”
― Avijeet Das

“Some books, some authors, open up doors of possibility for me as a writer. They break down what I know of form and composition and the rules of telling true stories and reassemble them into something novel and unfamiliar before handing them back to me to say “here, you can also do it like this”.”
― Jeanette LeBlanc

“Read, Write, Edit, Repeat”
― Michael Heppell, Write That Book: How to Write, Publish & Sell Your Book

“If you want potential readers to find your book on Amazon, at leat give them a map.”
― Michael Heppell, Write That Book: How to Write, Publish & Sell Your Book

“This led her to a consideration of how very difficult it must be for people to write novels, because all the young heroines were in the Forces or civilian jobs, and all the young heroes the same, so that there was very little time for novelists to make them fall in love with each other, unless they made the hero be a flying officer and the heroine a Waaf, and then one would have to know all the details of the R.A.F or one would make the most dreadful howlers.”
― Angela Thirkell, Growing Up