WRITING QUOTES
quotations about writing
We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.
RAY BRADBURY
Zen in the Art of Writing
I will write my way into another life.
ANN PATCHETT
Truth and Beauty
They are always asking a writer why he does not write like somebody else, or a painter why he does not paint like somebody else, quite oblivious of the fact that if either of them did anything of the kind he would cease to be an artist.
OSCAR WILDE
The Soul of Man Under Socialism
It's not so much that we write what we know; it's that we write what we feel ... or might have felt.
NANCY LAMB
The Art and Craft of Storytelling
Never resist a sentence you like, in which language takes its own pleasure and in which, after having abused it for so long, you are stupefied by its innocence.
JEAN BAUDRILLARD
Cool Memories
The only courageous act is to speak in the first person.
ARTHUR ADAMOV
attributed, Woorden
You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.
SAUL BELLOW
attributed, Something About the Author
Writing is static, unsocial, and restricts opportunities for the uptake of vitamin D.
SIMON ARMITAGE
"Language is my enemy -- I spend my life battling with it", The Guardian, March 25, 2017
We writers are shy, nocturnal creatures. Push us into the light and the light blinds us.
JOHN BANVILLE
"14th time lucky", The Guardian, October 12, 2005
Of all fatiguing, futile, empty trades, the worst, I suppose, is writing about writing.
HILAIRE BELLOC
"On Books", The Silence Of The Sea and Other Essays
I just go to that same daydream-spot inside my head that I'm pretty sure all of us have. I don't know if people who don'twrite for a living actually meet strangers there, but I do, on a regular basis, and I absolutely insist they arrive with a good problem and tell me about it. There are particularly good spots for productive encounters: there's a beach I imagine and if I sit long enough and stare down the length of it, I'm sure someone will come walking down it, and most of them are interesting when they arrive. Sometimes I don't write all I meet, but most of the ones I meet do have interesting backgrounds. And sometimes I find I'm not on that beach at all, but in some space station corridor or in some castle hallway. Once these strangers tell me a little about their worlds I can make up the rest, out of smidges of geology, geography, history, archaeology, and snippets of whole cloth, and once I know their history and their quirks, I can most often figure out the rest of the story. Translation: thinking up new ideas and characters isn't hard. Writing day and night for months ... that's hard.
C. J. CHERRYH
interview, SFF World, January 1, 2000
For a true writer each book should be a new beginning where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment. He should always try for something that has never been done or that others have tried and failed. Then sometimes, with great luck, he will succeed.
ERNEST HEMINGWAY
Nobel Prize acceptance speech, 1954
You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.
RAY BRADBURY
Zen in the Art of Writing
One had the right to write because other people needed news of the inner world, and if they went too long without such news they would go mad with the chaos of their lives.
ARTHUR MILLER
"The Shadows of the Gods"
I like to write when I feel spiteful. It is like having a good sneeze.
D. H. LAWRENCE
letter to Edward Marsh, November 18, 1913
When all things are equal, translucence in writing is more effective than transparency, just as glow is more revealing than glare.
JAMES THURBER
The New Yorker, 1959
With pen and with pencil we're learning to say nothing, more cleverly each day.
WILLIAM ALLINGHAM
Blackberries Picked Off Many Bushes
Writing has ... been to me like a bath from which I have risen feeling cleaner, healthier, and freer.
HENRIK IBSEN
Speeches and New Letters
I first said I wanted to be a writer at the age of seven. It took longer to get that first novel out than I expected.
ELIZABETH ZELVIN
"Interview Questions and Answers", official website
All the rest of the nonsense a story requires is just a long seduction of the ending. You throw out murders and reversals and heroes and detectives and spies, juggle love affairs and near escapes and standoffs with marvelous guns, kidnappings and sorcery and comic relief and gravediggers and princesses and albino dragons, and it's all just to lure an ending into your bed.
CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE
Radiance