Robert Frost Quotes

We speak naturally but spend all our lives trying to write naturally.

Speech is human nature itself, with none of the artificiality of written language.

You get a real person down there and his talking will take care of itself.

it is nice that nobody writes as they talk and that the printed language is different from the spoken otherwise you could not lose yourself in books and of course you do you completely do.

I try to write conversationally; I try to write like people speak and put the emphasis on the right syllable.

While the spoken word can travel faster, you can't take it home in your hand. Only the written word can be absorbed wholly at the convenience of the reader.

Reading aloud sounds like a good idea, but honestly, it doesn't work very well. Good dialogue in a book doesn't actually bear much resemblance to real-life dialogue. For example, if you've ever seen a word-for-word transcript of people talking, it doesn't read off the page very well. The trick is to make it *seem* like it's being spoken, not to make it speakable.

I have tons of stuff that, you know, seems like it's a well-constructed sentence but it is not how people talk, it's how people write. So that's why I think it's sometimes easier for me to write for actors 'cause I know what's frustrating about, you know, sentences that come out just perfect. Well, who talks like that? And who of us don't overlap each other? Except on the radio, hopefully.

I have difficulty putting words in peoples' mouths. The best dialogue is very, very thin dialogue; you let people improvise and then basically you record what they've improvised and then write it down.

I learned to write by listening to people talk. I still feel that the best of my writing comes from having heard rather than having read.

Blessings be the inventor of the alphabet, pen and printing press! Life would be -- to me in all events -- a terrible thing without books.

I try to make the voice in my head come out onto the page. I try to make it much more conversational than other writing. I speak everything, so if something sounds right I write it. It's more about sound and the rhythm of speech than written language.

Speak your dialogue out loud. If it sounds like the way people talk, then write it down.

Books worth reading are worth re-reading.

Writing is a difficult trade which must be learned slowly by reading great authors; by trying at the outset to imitate them; by daring then to be original; by destroying one's first productions.

God has condescended to become an author, and yet people will not read his writings. There are very few that ever gave this Book of God, the grand charter of salvation, one fair reading through.

The gift of creative reading, like all natural gifts, must be nourished or it will atrophy. And you nourish it, in much the same way you nourish the gift of writing - you read, think, talk, look, listen, hate, fear, love, weep - and bring all of your life like a sieve to what you read. That which is not worthy of your gift will quickly pass through, but the gold remains.

Writing poetry and reading books causes brain damage.

There are a few critics overseas, and occasionally a critic will write an astute analysis of the movie. There is value in reading critics that actually have something intelligent to say, but the journalistic community lives in a world of sound bites and literary commerce: selling newspapers, selling books, and they do that simply by trashing things. They don't criticize or analyze them. They simply trash them for the sake of a headline, or to shock people to get them to buy whatever it is they're selling.

You don't have to know the whole language to use it usefully, you can do baby talk, you can do grown up talk, you can cuss in it, you can write poetry, you can be a playwright, is sort of the idea.

Last night I thought about all the kerosene I've used in the past ten years. And I thought about books. And for the first time I realized that a man was behind each one of the books. A man had to think them up. A man had to take a long time to put them down on paper. And I'd never even thought that thought before...It took some man a lifetime maybe to put some of his thoughts down, looking around at the world and life, and then I come along in two minutes and boom! it's all over.

Reading makes me want to write my own books, and just trying to understand what I see in the world around me makes me want to figure things out.

The dearest ones of time, the strongest friends of the soul--BOOKS.

For some of us, good books and beautiful writing are our ultimate solace, even more comforting than exquisite food.

It's much more entertaining to live books than to write them.