WRITING QUOTES XIX

quotations about writing


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If you stuff yourself full of poems, essays, plays, stories, novels, films, comic strips, magazines, music, you automatically explode every morning like Old Faithful. I have never had a dry spell in my life, mainly because I feed myself well, to the point of bursting. I wake early and hear my morning voices leaping around in my head like jumping beans. I get out of bed to trap them before they escape.

RAY BRADBURY
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attributed, The Writer's Workout


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Tags: Ray Bradbury


Writers cannot let themselves be servants of the official mythology. They have to, whatever the cost, say what truth they have to say.

TOBIAS WOLFF

Continuum, summer 1998

Tags: Tobias Wolff


If there is an occupational hazard to writing, it's drinking.

CORMAC MCCARTHY

New York Times, April 19, 1992

Tags: Cormac McCarthy


I want to write because I have the urge to excel in one medium of translation and expression of life. I can't be satisfied with the colossal job of merely living. Oh, no, I must order life in sonnets and sestinas and provide a verbal reflector for my 60-watt lighted head.

SYLVIA PLATH

The Journals of Sylvia Plath

Tags: Sylvia Plath


I, even now, persist in believing that these black marks on white paper bear the greatest significance, that if I keep writing I might be able to catch the rainbow of consciousness in a jar.

JEFFREY EUGENIDES

Middlesex

Tags: Jeffrey Eugenides


Things that you write are in some degree autobiographical, but the first thing you find out about autobiography is that it's the hardest thing in the world to write. It's hard because it's very difficult to be absolutely factual about yourself. So ... when you write, you may draw on facts from your own life, but if their not in harmony with your story, they're worse than useless. You just stumble over them.

SAUL BELLOW

Q & A at Howard Community College, February 1986


I believe so. In its beginning, dialogue's the easiest thing in the world to write when you have a good ear, which I think I have. But as it goes on, it's the most difficult, because it has so many ways to function. Sometimes I needed to make a speech do three or four or five things at once--reveal what the character said but also what he thought he said, what he hid, what others were going to think he meant, and what they misunderstood, and so forth--all in his single speech. And the speech would have to keep the essence of this one character, his whole particular outlook in concentrated form. This isn't to say I succeeded. But I guess it explains why dialogue gives me my greatest pleasure in writing.

EUDORA WELTY

The Paris Review, fall 1972


The truth I'm trying to convey is not a startling one, it is simply a peeling away of affectation. I use whatever gift I have to get behind the façade.

ANITA BROOKNER

The Paris Review, fall 1987


When it's going well [writing] goes terribly fast. It isn't at all surprising to write a chapter in a day, which for me is about twenty-two pages. When it's going badly, it isn't really going badly; it's just the beginning.

JOHN LE CARRÉ

interview, The Paris Review, summer 1997


When you invent something, you're drawing on reservoirs of knowledge that you already have. It's only when you're faithful to the truth that something can come to you from the outside.

ELIF BATUMAN

interview, The Rumpus, April 25, 2012

Tags: Elif Batuman


Everybody writes a book too many.

MORDECAI RICHLER

"Sayings of the Week", The Observor, January 9, 1985

Tags: Mordecai Richler


I cannot and do not live in the world of discretion, not as a writer, anyway. I would prefer to, I assure you -- it would make life easier. But discretion is, unfortunately, not for novelists.

PHILIP ROTH

Deception: A Novel


I'm an into-the-mist writer in terms of plotting, and my process in general is very intuitive. Since my series characters are well established, what usually happens is they start talking in my head, and I'd better grab a pad and pen or hit the digital recorder feature on my iPhone or get to the keyboard before it goes away.

ELIZABETH ZELVIN

interview, Kings River Life Magazine, May 2012

Tags: Elizabeth Zelvin


I want to do something splendid ... something heroic or wonderful that won't be forgotten after I'm dead ... I think I shall write books.

LOUISA MAY ALCOTT

Little Women

Tags: Louisa May Alcott


Writing groups are the best things to happen to a writer since the invention of spell check. (I rely heavily on both so I would know.)

DASHA FAYVINOVA

"9 Reasons Joining A Writing Group Is One Of The Best Ways A Writer Can Grow", Bustle, February 8, 2016


Writing is creative, which is right brain activity. Editing is rational, logical and process/rule driven, which is left-brain activity. It seems that, if you switch consistently between the two, the creative process becomes derailed by all the rules and forms. You scare it back into the shadows.

DAVID CHISLETT

"Editing Is Not Writing", Books LIVE, February 12, 2016


So nothing will ever be written down again. Perhaps the act of writing is necessary only when nothing happens.

KOBO ABE

The Face of Another

Tags: Kobo Abe


There's something paralyzing about being a writer that you have to escape.... The 26 letters distance us from our own hesitations and they make us sound as if we know what we're doing. We know grammar, we know prose, but actually we're all just struggling in the dark, really.

NICHOLSON BAKER

interview, Interview Magazine, September 16, 2013

Tags: Nicholson Baker


There are men that will make you books, and turn them loose into the world, with as much dispatch as they would do a dish of fritters.

MIGUEL DE CERVANTES

Don Quixote

Tags: Miguel de Cervantes


There is only one way to make money at writing, and that is to marry a publisher's daughter.

GEORGE ORWELL

Down and Out in Paris and London

Tags: George Orwell