"Good writing is a kind of skating..." - Quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Good writing is a kind of skating which carries off the performer where he would not go, and is only right admirable when to all its beauty and speed a subserviency to the will, like that of walking, is added.
More by Ralph Waldo Emerson
“A sympathetic person is placed in the dilemma of a swimmer among drowning men, who all catch at him, and if he gives so much as a leg or a finger, they will drown him.”
“You will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it.”
“Man is the will, and woman the sentiment. In this ship of humanity, Will is the rudder, and Sentiment the sail; when woman affects to steer, the rudder is only a masked sail.”
More on Writing
“If I tried to write long-hand, I suppose I'd never finish a novel. I edit too much as I write - the paper would be "white-out" and sharpie marks. Writing with a computer works for me, so I stick with it.”
“The most extraordinary thing about writing is that when you've struck the right vein, tiredness goes. It must be an effort, thinking wrong.”
“A poet's interest in craft never fades, of course.”
More on Creativity
“It takes a heap of sense to write good nonsense”
“My characters talk to one another, and when it reaches a certain pitch of excitement I jump out of bed and run and trap them before they are gone.”
“...if you are writing without zest, without gusto, without love, without fun, you are only half a writer. It means you are so busy keeping one eye on the commercial market, or one ear peeled for the avant-garde coterie, that you are not being yourself. You don't even know yourself. For the first thing a writer should be is-- excited. He should be a thing of fevers and enthusiasms.”