quotations about writing
The writer must be universal in sympathy and an outcast by nature: only then can he see clearly.
JULIAN BARNES
Flaubert's Parrot
The process of writing a novel is like taking a journey by boat. You have to continually set yourself on course. If you get distracted or allow yourself to drift, you will never make it to the destination. It's not like highly defined train tracks or a highway; this is a path that you are creating, discovering. The journey is your narrative.
WALTER MOSLEY
This Year You Write Your Novel
Sometimes I think that my best writing comes from exposing my fears and vulnerabilities and hoping that nobody notices it's about me.
VICTORIA LAURIE
Twitter post, October 13, 2014
Nothing bad can happen to a writer. Everything is material.
PHILIP ROTH
attributed, Literary Agents: How to Get & Work With the Right One For You
Here are the two states in which you may exist: person who writes, or person who does not. If you write: you are a writer. If you do not write: you are not. Aspiring is a meaningless null state that romanticizes Not Writing. It's as ludicrous as saying, "I aspire to pick up that piece of paper that fell on the floor." Either pick it up or don't. I don’t want to hear about how your diaper's full. Take it off or stop talking about it.
CHUCK WENDIG
The Kick-Ass Writer
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
Writing is like hunting. There are brutally cold afternoons with nothing in sight, only the wind and your breaking heart. Then the moment when you bag something big.... This is a trophy brought back from the further realm, the kingdom of perpetual glistening night where we know ourselves absolutely. This one goes on the wall.
KATE BRAVERMAN
attributed, From Book to Bestseller
Whether 10 or 1,000 people are listening is irrelevant. Writing is an investment in your future and your potential.
BIANCA BASS
"Why You Should Write (Even If It Feels Like Nobody Is Listening)", Huffington Post, February 29, 2016
When we attempt to articulate our tender feelings in writing, we enter an inner dialogue of self-exploration: we forage for the more precise word, the more resonant phrasing. If the writing is done with particular care and attention, there is a Goldilocks quality to it: We rustle through an assortment of terms, discarding one, perhaps as "too weak" or another "too ordinary" until we settle upon the one that is "just right". In doing so, we have discovered something about ourselves.
DANIEL GRIFFIN
"Don't Tell Him You Love Him... Put It in Writing", Huffington Post, February 15, 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
In my view, if you write every day you're a certified graphomaniac, you're OCD, you're addicted to the physical act and not the real, spiritual one.
ROSEMARY JENKINSON
"Writing is not about youth but about spark", Irish Times, March 27, 2017
Lucky the one who writes in a book of spiral-bound mornings
a future in ink, who writes hand unshaking
JANE HIRSHFIELD
"Sweater"
One forges one's style on the terrible anvil of daily deadlines.
EMILE ZOLA
Le Figaro
I don't suppose a writing man ever really gets rid of his old crocus-yellow neckties. Sooner or later, I think, they show up in his prose, and there isn't a hell of a lot he can do about it.
J. D. SALINGER
"Seymour: An Introduction"
I have friends, some of whom are spectacularly good writers, who really want someone to edit them. I don't register that impulse. It's like the impulse for wanting a dog.
FRAN LEBOWITZ
interview, A. V. Club, June 17, 2011
I write from a thorough conviction that it is the duty of me, and with the belief that, after every drawback and shortcoming, I do my best, all things considered--that is for me, and, so being, the not being listened to by one human creature would, I hope, in nowise affect me.
ROBERT BROWNING
letter to Elizabeth Barrett, February 11, 1845
I tend to be very much a planner. I mean obviously details veer in the telling all the time, that's clearly the case, but in terms of the broad architecture of a book I plot carefully and if things start to veer halfway through, I tend to stop and either pull them back on course, or if I realize they are going in a better direction, I extrapolate and work out what effect this is going to have further down. I am not one of these writers who is able to enjoy flying by the sit of my pants. And there's no value judgment there, incidentally. I am very well aware that some absolutely fantastic, wonderful writers do that. For me, no, I cannot do it. I have to plan quite meticulously.
CHINA MIÉVILLE
"In a Carapace of Light: A Conversation with China Miéville", Clarkesworld
The writer is often faced with two choices--turn away from the reality of life's intimidating complexity or conquer its mystery by battling with it. The writer who chooses the former soon runs out of energy and produces elegantly tired fiction.
CHINUA ACHEBE
There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra
In his text, the writer sets up house. Just as he trundles papers, books, pencils, documents untidily from room to room, he creates the same disorder in his thoughts. They become pieces of furniture that he sinks into, content or irritable.
THEODOR W. ADORNO
Minima Moralia
With films, I just scribble a couple of notes for a scene. You don't have to do any writing at all, you just have your notes for the scene, which are written with the actors and the camera in mind. The actual script is a necessity for casting and budgeting, but the end product often doesn't bear much resemblance to the script--at least in my case.
WOODY ALLEN
The Paris Review, fall 1995