WRITING QUOTES XXIV

quotations about writing


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I always have the feeling that I'm never going to be able to write anything funny again. That's why I keep writing funny things. I have to prove to myself that I'm wrong.

RITA RUDNER
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interview, Huffington Post, March 18, 2013


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Tags: Rita Rudner


Everybody wants to feel that you're writing to a certain demographic because that's good business, but I've never done that ... I tried to write stories that would interest me. I'd say, what would I like to read?... I don't think you can do your best work if you're writing for somebody else, because you never know what that somebody else really thinks or wants.

STAN LEE

Brandweek, May 2000


At the age of fourteen I discovered writing as an escape from a world of reality in which I felt acutely uncomfortable.

TENNESSEE WILLIAMS

foreword, Sweet Bird of Youth

Tags: Tennessee Williams


As things stand now, I am going to be a writer. I'm not sure that I'm going to be a good one or even a self-supporting one, but until the dark thumb of fate presses me to the dust and says "you are nothing," I will be a writer.

HUNTER S. THOMPSON

Gonzo


All Writing Is Garbage. People who come out of nowhere to try to put into words any part of what goes on in their minds are pigs. The whole literary scene is a pigpen, especially today.

ANTONIN ARTAUD

Selected Writings

Tags: Antonin Artaud


A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment from which to look back or from which to look ahead.

GRAHAM GREENE

The End of the Affair

Tags: Graham Greene


A great writer creates a world of his own and his readers are proud to live in it. A lesser writer may entice them in for a moment, but soon he will watch them filing out.

CYRIL CONNOLLY

Enemies of Promise


Writers kid themselves -- about themselves and other people. Take the talk about writing methods. Writing is just work -- there's no secret. If you dictate or use a pen or type or write with your toes -- it's still just work.

SINCLAIR LEWIS

attributed, Just Open a Vein: A Book of Quotes for Writers

Tags: Sinclair Lewis


What bothers most critics of my work is the goofiness. One reviewer said I need to make up my mind if want to be funny or serious. My response is that I will make up my mind when God does, because life is a commingling of the sacred and the profane, good and evil. To try and separate them is fallacy.

TOM ROBBINS

"In the Creative Process with Tom Robbins; Perfect Sentences, Imperfect Universe", New York Times, December 30, 1993


To write weekly, to write daily, to write shortly, to write for busy people catching trains in the morning or for tired people coming home in the evening, is a heartbreaking task for men who know good writing from bad. They do it, but instinctively draw out of harm's way anything precious that might be damaged by contact with the public, or anything sharp that might irritate its skin.

VIRGINIA WOOLF

The Common Reader


The moment comes when a character does or says something you hadn't thought about. At that moment he's alive and you leave it to him.

GRAHAM GREENE

New York Times, October 9, 1985


That writer who aspires to immortality, should imitate the sculptor, if he would make the labours of the pen as durable as those of the chisel. Like the sculptor, he should arrive at ultimate perfection, not by what he adds, but by what he takes away.

CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Lacon


So much of a novelist's writing, as I have said, takes place in the unconscious: in those depths the last word is written before the first word appears on the paper. We remember details of our story, we do not invent them.

GRAHAM GREENE

The End of the Affair


Learn to write well, or not to write at all.

JOHN DRYDEN

Essay on Satire

Tags: John Dryden


It's not the word made flesh we want in writing, in poetry and fiction, but the flesh made word.

WILLIAM H. GASS

On Being Blue


In the past, the virtue of women's writing often lay in its divine spontaneity ... But it was also, and much more often, chattering and garrulous ... In future, granted time and books and a little space in the house for herself, literature will become for women, as for men, an art to be studied. Women's gift will be trained and strengthened. The novel will cease to be the dumping-ground for the personal emotions. It will become, more than at present, a work of art like any other, and its resources and its limitations will be explored.

VIRGINIA WOOLF

"Women and Fiction", Granite and Rainbow


In the end, the writer is not even allowed to live in his writing.

THEODOR W. ADORNO

Minima Moralia

Tags: Theodor W. Adorno


If you over-plot your book you strangle your characters. Your characters have to have enough freedom and life to be able to surprise you.

ALAN LIGHTMAN

interview, Identity Theory, November 16, 2000

Tags: Alan Lightman


I write what I want to write. Period. I don't write novels-for-hire using media tie-in characters, I don't write suspense novels or thrillers. I write horror. And if no one wants to buy my books, I'll just keep writing them until they do sell--and get a job at Taco Bell in the meantime.

BENTLEY LITTLE

"The Summoning: An Interview with Bentley Little", Giants of the Genre

Tags: Bentley Little


Go to any lengths to avoid preachiness! If you have to choose between the message and the story, always choose the story.

ELIZABETH ZELVIN

interview, The Fix

Tags: Elizabeth Zelvin