quotations about writing
I didn't do anything as active as deciding that I wanted to be a writer. For one thing, I didn't feel like I was the final authority on whether or not I was anything like a writer. (I'm a timid soul.) I just kept writing stories, because becoming a veterinarian seemed as if it involved too much dissection.
KELLY LINK
"Words by Flashlight", Sybil's Garage, June 7, 2006
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
I want to write because I have the urge to excel in one medium of translation and expression of life. I can't be satisfied with the colossal job of merely living. Oh, no, I must order life in sonnets and sestinas and provide a verbal reflector for my 60-watt lighted head.
SYLVIA PLATH
The Journals of Sylvia Plath
If there is an occupational hazard to writing, it's drinking.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
New York Times, April 19, 1992
One forges one's style on the terrible anvil of daily deadlines.
EMILE ZOLA
Le Figaro
The chief advantage that ancient writers can boast over modern ones, seems owing to simplicity. Every noble truth and sentiment was expressed by the former in the natural manner; in word and phrase, simple, perspicuous, and incapable of improvement. What then remained for later writers but affectation, witticism, and conceit?
WILLIAM SHENSTONE
Essays on Men and Manners
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
The truth I'm trying to convey is not a startling one, it is simply a peeling away of affectation. I use whatever gift I have to get behind the façade.
ANITA BROOKNER
The Paris Review, fall 1987
The writer operates at a peculiar crossroads where time and place and eternity somehow meet. His problem is to find that location.
FLANNERY O'CONNOR
Mystery and Manners
To finish is sadness to a writer--a little death. He puts the last word down and it is done. But it isn't really done. The story goes on and leaves the writer behind, for no story is ever done.
JOHN STEINBECK
The Paris Review, fall 1975
To write is to act.
HENRI-DOMINIQUE LACORDAIRE
Letters to Young Men
Well it's been hard for me to not write, and that's the only process I can speak to I guess, it's so compulsive and I need to do it all the time that sometimes I make myself not do it so I can actually tend to my life. And my life has been in shambles, like my personal relationships, my laundry, paying bills--now I have someone who pays my bills--and it's always been a challenge because it overwhelms me. And just once I start I can go for hours and hours and hours, and sometimes I forget to eat, and the only thing I really break for is to play basketball and to walk around outside and just get some fresh air. A lot of times, days melt away; and when I'm in that zone, I love that it's like going down a rabbit hole that I enjoy.
ADAM RAPP
interview, Broadway Bullet, March 26, 2007
Work on good prose has three steps: a musical stage when it is composed, an architectonic one when it is built, and a textile one when it is woven.
WALTER BENJAMIN
One-Way Street
Writers aren't people exactly. Or, if they're any good, they're a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person. It's like actors, who try so pathetically not to look in mirrors. Who lean backward trying--only to see their faces in the reflecting chandeliers.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
The Last Tycoon
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
Writing is a kind of centering, a kind of meditation. I find it to be profoundly rewarding. Actually, I'm an addict. If I go too long, and so far that hasn't been longer than a week, I start to feel unsettled, nervous. I begin to feel that I'm not engaged, a disconnection is threatening my world, that I'm being passed by and I'm both failing myself and the world by not writing about it.
WALTER BARGEN
"An interview with Walter Bargen, first poet laureate of Missouri"
Writing is an act of blind faith that out there, somewhere, someone will read and enjoy, understand.
JAMES V. SCHALL
"The Creative Catholic: Fr. James V. Schall S.J. on the art and vocation of writing", Catholic World Report, March 27, 2017
Writing, in whatever form, is your own personal progress report. There's nothing I love more than curling up with tea and reading back over my past, error-riddled posts. It's an indescribable connection that you simply can't get from a photo or memory alone. Think of it as the only true insight your future self has into you, as you are today. Blog for yourself and the rest will follow.
BIANCA BASS
"Why You Should Write (Even If It Feels Like Nobody Is Listening)", Huffington Post, February 29, 2016
You get a lot of narrative energy from people who make really big mistakes, who act against their best interests, who do things that turn out to have serious consequences. It's very hard make a story out of people doing the right thing over and over again.
KELLY LINK
"A Vampire is a Flexible Metaphor: An Interview with Kelly Link", Gigantic Magazine, October 23, 2013
You have an idea in mind of what you want to achieve when you sit down to write something. It takes many years to accept that you will always fall short of that. Maybe now I can write the book that I might have had in mind five or twenty years ago. You're always lagging behind your best ideas.
TOBIAS WOLFF
The Missouri Review, 2003