The collection / 34 fragments

The living archive

Passages, proverbs, and questions carried across the ages.

SearchTypeTopicEraCulture / collection labelCountry attributionTraditionOrder

Author

Leave empty for every voice. Browse all authors ↗

Culture labels and country attributions follow the source collections; earliest origins may be unknown.

34 results · Page 2 of 2Play this collection ▷

01Undated

Don’t listen to any advice from anybody who has fewer published bestsellers than you, or anybody with more bestsellers than you. Or anybody with the exact same number of bestsellers as you. Don’t listen to any advice at all, even this advice I’m telling you right now.

Dan Alatorre / quote

02Undated

Here’s my advice: you hold in your heart everything you need to know to write anything your story needs written. Dig deep and go where the pain and fear and joy are, and put it out there. The minute you shy away from pure honesty in your writing, you become a liar and people will smell it. People are suckers for the truth and they know it when they see it. Open your soul and they will stop and watch.

Dan Alatorre / quote

03Undated

You need an interesting voice. A grabber opening is great, compelling characters are awesome, but the voice – your unique voice – is what carries your story. Find your voice. Own your voice. Learn to tell interesting stories using your unique voice. That is the key.

Dan Alatorre / quote

04Undated

In the book (Savvy Stories) you see some very real, very personal moments. The first week of Savvy’s life was the longest week of ours. We spent five days in the NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit) worrying that our newborn daughter might die. It was touch and go for a while, and it was extremely difficult to write about. Chapter two gets a lot of people crying. But because we put that honesty out there, readers said “Okay, I can trust this guy.” Then they were better able to laugh with us, too.

Dan Alatorre / quote

05Undated

Don’t polish it forever, put it out there. At some point the changes aren’t improvements, they’re just changes.

Dan Alatorre / quote

06Undated

Writers get ideas all day every day. The FedEx guy delivers a package from Sears and the writer is thinking how it could actually be a ticking time bomb.

Dan Alatorre / quote

07Undated

On working with other writers: You develop honesty and you can then ask the really embarrassing questions. I have learned so many things I didn’t want to know, and they were all a result of interesting interviews for background information.

Dan Alatorre / quote

08Undated

My characters still talk the way normal people talk. They argue, they are sarcastic with each other, they joke around. I usually end up with one outrageous minor character in each book that people just rave about. We all have that one friend who says and does things that are a riot. A character like that is the salt in the soup: you want just enough to bring everything to life.

Dan Alatorre / quote

09Undated

People are suckers for the truth and they know it when they see it. Open your soul and they will stop and watch.

Dan Alatorre / quote

10Undated

Dig deep and go where the pain and fear and joy are, and put it out there. The minute you shy away from pure honesty in your writing, you become a liar.

Dan Alatorre / quote