WRITING QUOTES XXXI

quotations about writing

The reason why so few good books are written is, that so few people who can write know anything. In general an author has always lived in a room, has read books, has cultivated science, is acquainted with the style and sentiments of the best authors, but he is out of the way of employing his own eyes and ears. He has nothing to hear and nothing to see. His life is a vacuum.

WALTER BAGEHOT

Shakespeare: The Man

Tags: Walter Bagehot


Even though language has its richness the relationship between language and the writer is always like a stone and you have to make the stone human.

CARMEN BOULLOSA

Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, Vol. 4, No. 2, 1995

Tags: Carmen Boullosa


When I started out I just wanted to write books. I still do. It's the best job in the world for so many reasons. I wanted the thrill of seeing my books on the shelves in bookstores. I still do. The idea of someone reading my work, enjoying it was just amazing--and it still is. The bar rises, and that's a good thing. It pushes us to write smarter, write better, to dig deeper creatively. The bestseller lists, the awards, the sales or movies, they're all really delicious icing. But the work--the stories, the books--that's the cake. Too much icing without a really good, solid cake? It's going to make you fat, lazy and maybe a little bit sick. It's always about the cake first.

NORA ROBERTS

interview, inReads, October 5, 2011


Why write it? I thought it would earn me money.

ROBERT REED

interview, Fantasy & Science Fiction, December 18, 2012


The right story needs the right telling.

JOHN GREEN

interview, Chicago Public Library


Most writers -- poets in especial -- prefer having it understood that they compose by a species of fine frenzy -- an ecstatic intuition -- and would positively shudder at letting the public take a peep behind the scenes, at the elaborate and vacillating crudities of thought -- at the true purposes seized only at the last moment -- at the innumerable glimpses of idea that arrived not at the maturity of full view -- at the fully matured fancies discarded in despair as unmanageable -- at the cautious selections and rejections -- at the painful erasures and interpolations -- in a word, at the wheels and pinions -- the tackle for scene-shifting -- the step-ladders and demon-traps -- the cock's feathers, the red paint and the black patches, which, in ninety-nine cases out of the hundred, constitute the properties of the literary histrio.

EDGAR ALLAN POE

"The Philosophy of Composition"


In order to write the novel I'm committed to, I have to pretend that it's not only separate from everything I've written before, but also separate from anything anyone in the history of the universe has written. This is a grotesque delusion and a crass vanity, but also a creative necessity.

JULIAN BARNES

The Paris Review, winter 2000


I'm such a slow writer I have no need for anything as fast as a word processor. I don't need anything so snappy. I write so slowly that I could write in my own blood without hurting myself.

FRAN LEBOWITZ

The Paris Review, summer 1993


I'm writing a first draft and reminding myself that I'm simply shoveling sand into a box so that later I can build castles.

SHANNON HALE

attributed, The Novel-Writing Plan


Every character is an extension of the author's own personality.

EDWARD ALBEE

The New York Times, September 18, 1966

Tags: Edward Albee


Rejection has value. It teaches us when our work or our skillset is not good enough and must be made better. This is a powerful revelation, like the burning UFO wheel seen by the prophet Ezekiel, or like the McRib sandwich shaped like the Virgin Mary seen by the prophet Steve Jenkins. Rejection refines us. Those who fall prey to its enervating soul-sucking tentacles are doomed. Those who persist past it are survivors. Best ask yourself the question: what kind of writer are you? The kind who survives? Or the kind who gets asphyxiated by the tentacles of woe?

CHUCK WENDIG

"25 Things Writers Should Know About Rejection", Terrible Minds


Every author has the whole past to contend with; all the centuries are upon him. He is compared with Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton.

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

Table-Talk

Tags: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow


You never know what you will learn till you start writing. Then you discover truths you never knew existed.

ANITA BROOKNER

attributed, Journal for You, 2003


What people who don't write don't understand is that they think you make up the line consciously -- but you don't. It proceeds from your unconscious. So it's the same surprise to you when it emerges as it is to the audience when the comic says it. I don't think of the joke and then say it. I say it and then realize what I've said. And I laugh at it, because I'm hearing it for the first time myself.

WOODY ALLEN

Esquire, September 2013

Tags: Woody Allen


I spend a lot of time loathing the sentences that I put down on the page. Once I'm past that phase, it doesn't really matter what the routine is (coffee shop, someone else's house, my dining room table), I'm pretty fast. I go back to the start of whatever I'm working on, every half hour or so, and revise my way back to where I left off. I have my headphones on, I'm checking email, I look at Twitter and Tumblr, and drink a lot of coffee. I need a lot of distraction to work.

KELLY LINK

interview, Electric Lit, February 6, 2015

Tags: Kelly Link


A serious writer is not to be confused with a solemn writer. A serious writer may be a hawk or a buzzard or even a popinjay, but a solemn writer is always a bloody owl.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY

Death in the Afternoon


You become a serious novelist by living long enough.

DON DELILLO

Conversations with Don DeLillo

Tags: Don DeLillo


First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you're inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won't. Habit is persistence in practice.

OCTAVIA E. BUTLER

"Furor Scribendi", Bloodchild and Other Stories


You simply keep putting down one damn word after the other, as you hear them, as they come to you. You can either set brick as a laborer or as an artist.

ANNE LAMOTT

Bird by Bird

Tags: Anne Lamott


If you are to become a writer you'll have to stop fooling with words.

SHERWOOD ANDERSON

"The Teacher", Winesburg, Ohio

Tags: Sherwood Anderson