WRITING QUOTES XIII

quotations about writing

I find writing extremely difficult. I usually have to drag myself to my desk, mainly because I doubt myself. And it's getting harder because I want to improve with every book. Sometimes I guess it's best just to forget there's an audience and just write like no one will ever read it at all.

MARKUS ZUSAK

"Why I Write", The Guardian, March 28, 2008


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


Writing can wreck your body. You sit there on the chair hour after hour and sweat your guts out to get a few words.

NORMAN MAILER

The New York Times, October 4, 2000


I think without writing I would feel completely useless.

SAM SHEPARD

The Observer, March 20, 2010

Tags: Sam Shepard


Once somebody's aware of a plot, it's like a bone sticking out. If it breaks through the skin, it's very ugly.

LOUIS AUCHINCLOSS

The Paris Review, fall 1994


You have to seduce the reader, manipulate their mind and heart, listen to the music of language. I sometimes think of prose as music, in terms of its rhythms and dynamics, the way you compress and expand the attention of a reader over a sentence, the way the tempo pushes you towards an image or sensation. We want an intense experience, so that we can forget ourselves when we enter the world of the book. When you are reading, the physical object of the book should disappear from your hands.

CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON

"The Shadow Maker", The Telegraph, November 27, 2005

Tags: Carlos Ruiz Zafon


Everyone who has ever written will have discovered that writing always awakens something which, though it lay within us, we failed clearly to recognize before.

GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG

"Notebook J", The Waste Books


I think it is essential to promote your work, since there are over 100,000 books published each year, and readers can fall in love with books they've never heard about.

DOUGLAS CARLTON ABRAMS

interview, The Writer's Life

Tags: Douglas Carlton Abrams


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


I wrote without much effort; for I was rich, and the rich are always respectable, whatever be their style of writing.

JANE AUSTEN

letter to Cassandra Austen, June 20, 1808

Tags: Jane Austen


That's also part of having great editors -- they can sort of be honest with you and say, "I see where you're headed with this, but I don't think it's there yet. Dig deeper, babe, and come back with something more." And that's what you do, you dig waaaaaaaay down and you walk around the block eight million times and then you have it -- shazam! And it all comes together in something soooo much better than you thought you were capable of.

VICTORIA LAURIE

interview, Author's Den

Tags: Victoria Laurie


The final lesson a writer learns is that everything can nourish the writer. The dictionary, a new word, a voyage, an encounter, a talk on the street, a book, a phrase learned.

ANAÏS NIN

attributed, French Writers of the Past


The industry is a terrible, cold place run by people who love to tear writers apart. Rejection is the norm, which means writing is the act of falling madly, deeply in love with your characters and story, even knowing you'll probably get your heart broken for it.

COREY MANDELL

"Beware the Writing Zombies", Huffington Post, February 25, 2016


I'm an into-the-mist writer in terms of plotting, and my process in general is very intuitive. Since my series characters are well established, what usually happens is they start talking in my head, and I'd better grab a pad and pen or hit the digital recorder feature on my iPhone or get to the keyboard before it goes away.

ELIZABETH ZELVIN

interview, Kings River Life Magazine, May 2012

Tags: Elizabeth Zelvin


He who only writes to suit the taste of the age, considers himself more than his writings. We should always aim at perfection, and then posterity will do us that justice which sometimes our contemporaries refuse us.

JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE

"Of Works of the Mind", Les Caractères

Tags: Jean de La Bruyere


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


The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true.

JOHN STEINBECK

New York Times, June 2, 1969

Tags: John Steinbeck


Since we must and do write each our own way, we may during actual writing get more lasting instruction not from another's work, whatever its blessings, however better it is than ours, but from our own poor scratched-over pages. For these we can hold up to life. That is, we are born with a mind and heart to hold each page up to, and to ask: is it valid?

EUDORA WELTY

On Writing


We writers don't really think about whether what we write is good or not. It's too much to worry about. We just put the words down, trying to get them right, operating by some inner sense of pitch and proportion, and from time to time, we stick the stuff in an envelope and ship it to an editor.

GARRISON KEILLOR

"Who Has Time to Be a Writer?", Salon, August 11, 1998

Tags: Garrison Keillor


Good writers define reality; bad ones merely restate it.

EDWARD ALBEE

Saturday Review, May 4, 1966