WRITING QUOTES II
quotations about writing
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It may appear flippant to tell aspiring writers that if they want to learn to write well, they should begin by writing: something, anything. That's how the best writers started and that's how all of us continue to write.
ALI MADEEH HASHMI
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"The art of writing", The News on Sunday, March 11, 2017
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The good writing of any age has always been the product of someone's neurosis, and we'd have a mighty dull literature if all the writers that came along were a bunch of happy chuckleheads.
WILLIAM STYRON
attributed, Writers at Work
I've never been able to write a book without one very strong character in my rucksack.
JOHN LE CARRÉ
interview, The Paris Review, summer 1997
Indeed, being a beginner is very difficult right now. Book publishers are in a crisis, sales are dwindling, and publishing houses are losing money, doing their best to survive. It's a sign of the times, the emergence of new kinds of entertainment -- there's nothing we can do about it. I don't think books will perish for good. They could become less widespread, though, falling even further behind movies and computer games. But we shouldn't be afraid of this, because books will always remain the entertainment of choice for intelligent people, of whom there are still many in this world.
SERGEI LUKYANENKO
interview, The Telegraph, October 5, 2012
If you will describe the people--nay, if you will write for the people, you must be one of the people.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
Writing is rewriting. It's all about building off of what you have and making it better.
DASHA FAYVINOVA
"9 Reasons Joining A Writing Group Is One Of The Best Ways A Writer Can Grow", Bustle, February 8, 2016
My theory of the uses of fiction is that beneficent fiction calls into full life our total range of imaginative faculties and gives us a heightened sense of our personal, social and human reality.
CHINUA ACHEBE
Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays
A line will take us hours maybe;
Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought,
Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
"Adam's Curse", In the Seven Woods
Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay. I'm always irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It is a plunge into reality and it's very shocking to the system.
FLANNERY O'CONNOR
Mystery and Manners
It is always vaunting, of course, to imagine yourself inside another person, but it is what a story writer does in every piece of work; it is his first step, and his last too, I suppose.
EUDORA WELTY
One Writer's Beginnings
With a practice of writing comes a certain important integrity. A culture filled with bloggers thinks differently about politics or public affairs, if only because more have been forced through the discipline of showing in writing why A leads to B.
LAWRENCE LESSIG
Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy
I suffer as always from the fear of putting down the first line. It is amazing the terrors, the magics, the prayers, the straitening shyness that assail one. It is as though the words were not only indelible but that they spread out like dye in water and color everything around them. A strange and mystic business, writing.
JOHN STEINBECK
The Paris Review, fall 1975
I don't give a damn what other people think. It's entirely their own business. I'm not writing for other people.
HAROLD PINTER
interview, December 1971
If I've already figured out how the book ends, why bother to finish writing it? My writing isn't terribly efficient, because I often have to backtrack a bit when I change my mind, but I like the sense of discovery that comes from not knowing what happens next.
PATRICIA BRIGGS
interview, Bitten by Books, March 30, 2010
A little while back I observed that many people are put off writing because they fear committing one or more of the innumerable errors that seem to lie in wait for them at every step of composition. But if one understands that a sentence is a structure of logical relationships and that the number of relationships involved is finite, one understands too that there is only one error to worry about, the error of being illogical, and only one rule to follow: make sure that every component of your sentence is related to the other components in a way that is clear and unambiguous (unless ambiguity is what you are aiming at).
STANLEY FISH
How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One
Sex has to be good for both partners. That is also the key to writing both fiction and nonfiction. It has to be a good experience for both partners, the writer and the reader, and it is a source of distress to me to observe how frequently writers ignore the pleasure of their partners.
SOL STEIN
Stein on Writing
Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader, not the fact that it's raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.
E. L. DOCTOROW
attributed, Stein on Writing
After I write, I have nothing to say. The commentary afterwards is superfluous. I write. And that's enough.
YASMINA REZA
"Celebrated Playwright Who Resists Celebrity", The New York Times, May 24, 2011
Writing has freed me from the despair of living.
ANITA BROOKNER
The Paris Review, fall 1987
In writing ... remember that the biggest stories are not written about wars, or about politics, or even murders. The biggest stories are written about the things which draw human beings closer together.
SUSAN GLASPELL
Little Masks