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Writing Quotes by F. Scott Fitzgerald

64 Writing quotes by F. Scott Fitzgerald

All Writing quotes F. Scott Fitzgerald’s page

Fitzgerald notes that character and plot are tangled, each shaping the other. He jokes that writers often feel a race against time, as if finishing a book could cost them their head. He also points out that writing can be a way to leave oneself behind and explore other lives.

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Character is plot, plot is character.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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Show me a hero and I'll write you a tragedy.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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A writer wastes nothing.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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Nothing any good isn't hard.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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Cut out all these exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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What people are ashamed of usually makes a good story.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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“Poetry is dying first. It'll be absorbed into prose sooner or later.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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I may turn out an intellectual, but I'll never write anything but mediocre poetry.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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Nobody ever became a writer just by wanting to be one.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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Find the key emotion; this may be all you need know to find your short story.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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“I doubt if, after all, I’ll ever write anything again worth putting in print.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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Draw your chair up close to the edge of the precipice and I’ll tell you a story.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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The history of my life is the history of the struggle between an overwhelming urge to write and a combination of circumstances…

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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“Understand now, I'm purely a fiction writer and do not profess to be an earnest student of political science, but I believe…

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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Often I think writing is a sheer paring away of oneself leaving always something thinner, barer, more meagre.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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My idea is always to reach my generation. The wise writer writes for the youth of his own generation, the critics of…

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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“I could never be a Communist. I could never be regimented. I could never be told what to write.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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Prose talent depends on having something to say and an interesting, highly developed way of saying it.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmaster of ever…

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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Begin with an individual, and before you know it you find that you have created a type; begin with a type, and…

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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“A writer must find his own grain, way, bent. ...He aspires to create new and original works. His way is alone. If…

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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A writer like me must have an utter confidence, an utter faith in his star. It's an almost mystical feeling, a feeling…

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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“To Scottie July 1937 I honestly believed with no effort on my part [10 years earlier at 30 on his first trip…

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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Understand now, I'm purely a fiction writer and do not profess to be an earnest student of political science, but I believe…

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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“To Scottie July 18, 1940 p.454 The prose talent depends on other factors- assimilation of material and careful selection of it, or…

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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Progress was a labyrinth ... people plunging blindly in and then rushing wildly back, shouting that they had found it ... the…

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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The only way to increase it is to cultivate your own garden. And the only thing that will help you is poetry,…

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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Amory took to writing poetry on spring afternoons, in the gardens of the big estates near Princeton, while swans made effective atmosphere…

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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“I want to be able to do anything with words: handle slashing, flaming descriptions like Wells, and use the paradox with the…

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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You've got to sell your heart, your strongest reactions, not the little minor things that only touch you lightly, the little experiences…

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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Writing is eternal, For therein the dead heart liveth, the clay-cold tongue is eloquent, And the quick eye of the reader is…

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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“To Frances Turnbull Nov. 9, 1938 p. 368 I've read the story carefully and, Frances, I'm afraid the price for doing professional…

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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I was haunted always by my other life-my drab room in the Bronx, my square foot of the subway, my fixation upon…

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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Mostly, we authors must repeat ourselves - that's the truth. We have two or three great and moving experiences in our lives…

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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“He tries to go to life. So does every author except the very worst, but after all most of them live on…

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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“One writes of scars healed, a loose parallel to the pathology of the skin, but there is no such thing in the…

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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You don't write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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“Writers aren't exactly people, they're a bunch of people trying to be one person.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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“If you write me letters, please let them be natural ones. ”

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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“All good writing is like swimming underwater and holding your breath.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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“His dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald

“There was a ripe mystery about it, a hint of bedrooms upstairs more beautiful and cool than other bedrooms, of gay and radiant activities…

F. Scott Fitzgerald

I want you to take a red-hot bath as hot as you can bear it, and just relax your nerves. You can read in…

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Tireless passion, fierce jealousy, longing to possess and crush-these alone were left of all his love for Rosalind; these remained to him as payment…

F. Scott Fitzgerald

I found something! Courage--just that; courage as a rule of life and something to cling to always.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

“Life is a series of successful gestures...”

F. Scott Fitzgerald

“Another dawn flung itself across the river; a belated taxi hurried along the street, its lamps still shining like burning eyes in a face…

F. Scott Fitzgerald

“She plucked a twig and broke it, but she found no spring in it.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald

“I'm one of those people who go through the world giving other people thrills but getting few myself except those I read into men…

F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Montana sunset lay between the mountains like a giant bruise from which darkened arteries spread across a poisoned sky.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

“You loved me too?" he repeated.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald

“He was good looking, "sort of distinguished when he wants to be", had a line, and was properly inconstant. In fact, he summed up…

F. Scott Fitzgerald

What are you going to do? "Can't say - run for president, write -" "Greenwich Village?" "Good heavens, no - I said write -…

F. Scott Fitzgerald

“The latter was considered a good fellow and a fine leader, until a year later, when he disappeared with a mess fund of eleven…

F. Scott Fitzgerald

“It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And then one fine…

F. Scott Fitzgerald