Speak Up! Friday Quotes (9)

• “Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings” ― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft.

• “Like a city with breached walls is a man without self-control” (Proverbs 25:28 ISV).

• “So the writer who breeds more words than he needs, is making a chore for the reader who reads” ― Dr. Seuss.

• “We were revisionists; what we revised was ourselves” ― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale.

• “A good story cannot be devised; it has to be distilled” ― Raymond Chandler.

• “I’m writing a first draft and reminding myself that I’m simply shoveling sand into a box so that later I can build castles” ― Shannon Hale.

• “We never end up with the book we began writing. Characters twist it and turn it until they get the life that is perfect for them. A good writer won’t waste their time arguing with the characters they create; it is almost always a waste of time and people tend to stare when you do!” ― C.K. Webb.

• “I have rewritten — often several times — every word I have ever published. My pencils outlast their erasers” — Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory, 1966.

• “Your eloquence should be the servant of the ideas in your head. Your rule might be this: If a sentence, no matter how excellent, does not illuminate your subject in some new and useful way, scratch it out” — Kurt Vonnegut, How to Use the Power of the Printed Word.