WRITING QUOTES IV
quotations about writing
There would be punishment and pain, and there would be happiness, too. That was writing.
MARKUS ZUSAK
The Book Thief
Cautious men have many adverbs, "usually," "nearly," "almost ": safe men begin, " it may be advanced " : you never know precisely what their premises are, nor what their conclusion is; they go tremulously like a timid rider; they turn hither and thither; they do not go straight across a subject, like a masterly mind.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
For me, writing is just a thing I need to do everyday, like breathing or eating.
GUY CAPECELATRO III
"Power of music shines in Capecelatro's heartfelt album", Seacoast Online, March 30, 2017
I am not someone who is very good at writing a certain amounts every day. I know that's what one is told one should do, but what I tend to do is kind of sequester myself away while I am in London for a few weeks at a time and become very antisocial and write very, very intensively over a relatively short time. I am much more of a burst writer than a steady-state writer.
CHINA MIÉVILLE
"In a Carapace of Light: A Conversation with China Miéville", Clarkesworld
Rejections are painful, but inevitable. They're every writer's rite of passage.
OCTAVIA E. BUTLER
"Furor Scribendi", Bloodchild and Other Stories
Writing is a profession you can practice while upside down and experiencing total blackout in a cave. You just use the mental recorder instead of pen and paper ... or portable ... and hope you find a use for the experience.
C. J. CHERRYH
interview, SFF World, January 1, 2000
A true piece of writing is a dangerous thing. It can change your life.
TOBIAS WOLFF
Old School
I am not at all in a humor for writing; I must write on till I am.
JANE AUSTEN
letter to Cassandra Austen, October 26, 1813
I was always fascinated by the fact that you could take paper and ink and create worlds, images, characters. It seemed like magic.
CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON
"Q & A: Author Carlos Ruiz Zafon", Time, June 30, 2009
It is the glory and the merit of some men to write well, and of others not to write at all.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Works of the Mind", Les Caractères
Novices in the art attain to finish of diction and precision of portraiture before they can construct the plot.
ARISTOTLE
Poetics
All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know.
ERNEST HEMINGWAY
A Moveable Feast
But most important of all is the structure of the incidents. For Tragedy is an imitation, not of men, but of an action and of life, and life consists in action.
ARISTOTLE
Poetics
For a sentence is not complete unless each word, once its syllables have been pronounced, gives way to make room for the next.
ST. AUGUSTINE
Confessions
I myself, as I'm writing, don't know who did it. The readers and I are on the same ground. When I start to write a story, I don't know the conclusion at all and I don't know what's going to happen next. If there is a murder case as the first thing, I don't know who the killer is. I write the book because I would like to find out. If I know who the killer is, there's no purpose to writing the story.
HURAKI MURAKAMI
Paris Review, summer 2004
It was not a choice of writing or not writing. It was a choice of loving my life or not loving my life. To keep writing was always a first priority.... I worked probably 25 years by myself.... Just writing and working, not trying to publish much. Not giving readings. A longer time than people really are willing to commit before they want to go public.
MARY OLIVER
The Christian Science Monitor, December 9, 1992
So basically, it's totally selfish why I write. There are more harmful ways to spend your time, is how I justify it I guess. If my stories can make others laugh, or make others feel unexpected and complicated emotions, well then it's more than feeling good, then it's a bonus, then its rewarding, then you're building community.
TYLER BARTON
"Millennial Writers on Writing", Huffington Post, February 16, 2016
There is as much variety of pluck in writing across a sheet, as in riding across a country.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
There's no such thing as perfect writing, just like there's no such thing as perfect despair.
HURAKI MURAKAMI
Hear the Wind Sing
To subvert is not the aim of literature, its value lies in discovering and revealing what is rarely known, little known, thought to be known but in fact not very well known of the truth of the human world. It would seem that truth is the unassailable and most basic quality of literature.
GAO XINGJIAN
Nobel Lecture, 2000