Ayn Rand Quotes About Writing
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Do not set out to write with your eyes on the box office. It can't be done.
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If you write a whole line of zeroes, it's still — nothing.
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The best, most natural dialogue is usually written as if the writer is listening to dictation. You might get stuck on any particular point and have to question yourself; but normally, dialogue writes itself.
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You don't build for the way people live, but for the way they should live. I don't write about people as they are, but as they could be and should be.
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If he can give his readers no reason why they should read his book, except that the events happened to him, it is not a valid book.
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Even in dialogue, your own style rules your selection. Do not give yourself a blank check of this kind: 'I'll merely reproduce what I think a character like so-and-so would say.' You have to reproduce it in the way your literary premises dictate.
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To be the kind of writer you want to be, you must first be the kind of thinker you want to be.
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If a drought strikes them, animals perish--man builds irrigation canals; if a flood strikes them, animals perish--man builds dams; if a carnivorous pack attacks them, animals perish--man writes the Constitution of the United States.
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The art of writing is the art of doing what you think you're doing. This is not as simple as it sounds. It implies a very difficult undertaking: the necessity to think. And it implies the requirement to think out three separate, very hard problems: What is it you want to say? How are you going to say it? Have you really said it?
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It is a sin to write this.
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Words are a lens to focus one's mind.
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I write - and read - for the sake of the story... My basic test for any story is: 'Would I want to meet these characters and observe these events in real life? Is this story an experience worth living through for its own sake? Is the pleasure of contemplating these characters an end itself?
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By what he chooses to present and by how he presents it, any author expresses his fundamental, metaphysical values.
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A reader has to be concerned only with the end result; unless he chooses to analyze it, he does not have to know by what means that result was achieved-but it is my job to know.
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