Ralph Keyes Quotes

Writing is merely public speaking on paper, but to a much larger audience.

Tools are totems, an important weapon in the fight against fear.

One thing that separates would-be writers from working writers is that the latter know their work will never match their dreams.

Serious writers write, inspired or not. Over time they discover that routine is a better friend than inspiration.

Fear flushes clogged pores of perception.

Willa Cather said that she write best when she stopped trying to write and began simply to remember.

"...wrote Lawrence Block. "Someone once told me that fear and courage are like lightning and thunder; they both start out at the same time, but the fear travels faster and arrives sooner. If we just wait a moment, the requisite courage will be along shortly." (quoted from Write for Your Live by Lawrence Block)"

I prefer a man who is unskillful, who is an awkward writer, but who has something to say, who is dealing himself one time on every page.

Those who generate fog are Wizards of Oz hoping desperately that nobody pulls the curtain to reveal a trembling little writer behind it. This seldom happens. Readers who dare to point out that incomprehensible writing can't be comprehended risk being told that the problem is theirs.

Find tricks to keep yourself going,” William Least Heat Moon once advised a group of aspiring writers. “Anything you can do to trick yourself out of panicking, do it.

writing about something was not the moral equivalent of doing it,

One of the most fundamental of human fears is that our existence will go unnoticed.

...fear and courage are like lightning and thunder; they both sart out at the same time, but the fear travels faster and arrives sooner. If we just wait a moment, the requisite courage will be along shortly.

Fear is felt by writers at every level. Anxiety accompanies the first word they put on paper and the last.

"When members of the London Poetry Society asked Browning to interpret a particularly difficult passage of Sordello, he read it twice, frowned, then admitted, "When I wrote that, God and I knew what I meant, but now God alone knows."

Rather than risk sounding dense, readers, colleagues, and critics who can't figure out what a writer is trying to say but think it sounds intelligent will typically resort to calling such work "daring," "provocative," or "complex." An unholy alliance of writers and readers is at work here."