"The best time for planning a book is while you're doing the dishes."
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"The secret of getting ahead is getting started."
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"There was a moment when I changed from an amateur to a professional. I assumed the burden of a profession, which is to write even when you don't want to, don't much like what you're writing, and aren't writing particularly well."
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There is no doubt that the effort involved in typing or writing does help me in keeping to the point... It is important to profit by the fact that a human being is naturally lazy and so won't write more than is absolutely necessary to convey his meaning."
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"Wherever there is human nature, there is drama."
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"Writing is a great comfort to people like me, who are unsure of themselves and have trouble expressing themselves properly."
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"When you begin to write, you are usually in the throes of admiration for some writer, and, whether you will or not, you cannot help copying their style. Often it is not a style that suits you, and so you write badly. But as time goes on, you are less influenced by admiration. You still admire certain writers, you may even wish you could write like them, but you know quite well that you can't."
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"Words are such uncertain things, they so often sound well but mean the opposite of what one thinks they do."
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"Very few of us are what we seem."
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"Good advice is always certain to be ignored, but that's no reason not to give it."
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"I suppose it is because nearly all children go to school nowadays and have things arranged for them that they seem so forlornly unable to produce their own ideas."
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"Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way."
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"Writers can't stand suggestions, if you suggest something, we'll do exactly the opposite."
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"I found a book entitled, How to Be Amazing at Anything. It had only a single page inside and was just one word long: PRACTICE."
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"Imagination is a good servant and a bad master."
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"You don't invent your settings. They are outside you, all around you, in existence-you only have to stretch out your hand and pick and choose."
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"There is a right length for everything."
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"There always has to be a lapse of time after the accomplishment of a piece of creative work before you can in any way evaluate it."
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"Your criticism is bound to be that you yourself would have written it in such and such a way, but that does not mean that it would be right for another author. We all have our own ways of expressing ourselves."
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"It is no good starting out by thinking one is a heaven-born genius-some people are, but very few. No, one is a tradesman - a tradesman is a good honest trade. You must learn the technical skills, and then, within that trade, you can apply your own creative ideas; but you must submit to the discipline of form."