WRITING QUOTES XI

quotations about writing

I like to write. Sometimes I'm afraid that I like it too much because when I get into work I don't want to leave it. As a result I'll go for days and days without leaving the house or wherever I happen to be. I'll go out long enough to get papers and pick up some food and that's it. It's strange, but instead of hating writing I love it too much.

HARPER LEE

interview with Roy Newquist, Counterpoints, 1964

Tags: Harper Lee


Writing is about growth, challenge and change. Without those things, there's no joy in it.

VERONICA ROTH

"Best-Selling Author Veronica Roth Tells What Writing Books Is Really Like", Entrepreneur, March 30, 2017


In a very real way, one writes a story to find out what happens in it. Before it is written it sits in the mind like a piece of overheard gossip or a bit of intriguing tattle. The story process is like taking up such a piece of gossip, hunting down the people actually involved, questioning them, finding out what really occurred, and visiting pertinent locations. As with gossip, you can't be too surprised if important things turn up that were left out of the first-heard version entirely; or if points initially made much of turn out to have been distorted, or simply not to have happened at all.

SAMUEL R. DELANY

The Jewel-Hinged Jaw


Great novelists are philosopher-novelists who write in images instead of arguments.

ALBERT CAMUS

The Myth of Sisyphus


I think without writing I would feel completely useless.

SAM SHEPARD

The Observer, March 20, 2010

Tags: Sam Shepard


A lot of novelists start late--Conrad, Pirandello, even Mark Twain. When you're young, chess is all right, and music and poetry. But novel-writing is something else. It has to be learned, but it can't be taught. This bunkum and stinkum of college creative writing courses! The academics don't know that the only thing you can do for someone who wants to write is to buy him a typewriter.

JAMES M. CAIN

The Paris Review, spring-summer 1978

Tags: James M. Cain


You might get the impression that I have a mild contempt for storytelling, which is only somewhat true. For example, I really like Agatha Christie. She obeys the rules of the genre at first, but then occasionally she manages to do very personal things. In my case, I think I start from the opposite point. At first, I don't obey, I don't plot, but then from time to time, I say to myself, Come on, there's got to be a story. I control myself. But I will never give up a beautiful fragment merely because it doesn't fit in the story.

MICHEL HOUELLEBECQ

The Paris Review, fall 2010

Tags: Michel Houellebecq


Good fiction creates its own reality.

NORA ROBERTS

The Stanislaski Brothers


A man always writes absolutely well whenever he writes in his own manner, but the wigmaker who tries to write like Gellert ... writes badly.

GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG

"Notebook B", The Waste Books

Tags: Georg Christoph Lichtenberg


The privilege of being a writer is that you have this opportunity to slow down and to consider things.

CHRIS ABANI

interview, UTNE Reader, June 2010

Tags: Chris Abani


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


Writing is -- at least for me -- movement forward, the conquest of a body that I do not know at all, away from something to something that I do not yet know; I never know what will happen -- and here 'happen' is not intended as plot resolution, in the sense of classical dramaturgy, but in the sense of a complicated and complex experiment that with given imaginary, spiritual, intellectual and sensual materials in interaction strives -- on paper to boot! -- towards incarnation.

HEINRICH BÖLL

Nobel Lecture, May 2, 1973


Lucky the one who writes in a book of spiral-bound mornings
a future in ink, who writes hand unshaking

JANE HIRSHFIELD

"Sweater"

Tags: Jane Hirshfield


I have not felt in a humor to entertain you if I had taken up my pen. Perhaps some unbecoming invective might have fallen from it.

ABIGAIL ADAMS

letter to John Adams, May 7, 1776

Tags: Abigail Adams


The demand that I make of my reader is that he should devote his whole life to reading my works.

JAMES JOYCE

interview with Max Eastman, Harper's Magazine, 1929?

Tags: James Joyce


When I taught, a lot of my students weren't big readers, so they would write something and I realized that they thought it belonged in a book. Like, they didn't know what the inside of a book looked like, you know what I mean?

DAVID SEDARIS

Oasis Magazine, June 2008

Tags: David Sedaris


Writing is a part of healing, of digging into society.

KHALED KHALIFA

"Syrian novelist Khaled Khalifa tells the stories of a bleeding, beautiful country", Syria Direct, March 23, 2017


A great writer has a high respect for values. His essential function is to raise life to the dignity of thought, and this he does by giving it a shape.

ANDRÉ MAUROIS

The Art of Writing

Tags: André Maurois


Maybe everyone does have a novel in them, perhaps even a great one. I don't believe it, but for the purposes of this argument, let's say it's so. Only a few of us are going to be willing to break our own hearts by trading in the living beauty of imagination for the stark disappointment of words. This is why we type a line or two and then hit the delete button or crumple up the page. Certainly that was not what I meant to say! That does not represent what I see. Maybe I should try again another time. Maybe the muse has stepped out back for a smoke. Maybe I have writer's block. Maybe I'm an idiot and was never meant to write at all.

ANN PATCHETT

The Getaway Car


The easier a thing is to write then the more the writer gets paid for writing it. (And vice versa: ask the poets at the bus stop.)

MARTIN AMIS

The Information