WRITING QUOTES XXII

quotations about writing

I would say that the writers I like and trust have at the base of their prose something called the English sentence. An awful lot of modern writing seems to me to be a depressed use of language. Once, I called it "vow-of-poverty prose." No, give me the king in his countinghouse. Give me Updike.

MARTIN AMIS

The Paris Review, spring 1998


I made up my mind long ago to follow one cardinal rule in all my writing -- to be clear. I have given up all thought of writing poetically or symbolically or experimentally, or in any of the other modes that might (if I were good enough) get me a Pulitzer prize. I would write merely clearly and in this way establish a warm relationship between myself and my readers, and the professional critics -- Well, they can do whatever they wish.

ISAAC ASIMOV

introduction, Nemesis

Tags: Isaac Asimov


I hate writing. I so intensely hate writing -- I cannot tell you how much. The moment I am at the end of one project I have the idea that I didn't really succeed in telling what I wanted to tell, that I need a new project -- it's an absolute nightmare. But my whole economy of writing is in fact based on an obsessional ritual to avoid the actual act of writing.

SLAVOJ ZIZEK

Conversations with Zizek

Tags: Slavoj Zizek


I don't believe in the notion that some characters have lives of their own and the author follows after them. The author has to be careful not to force the character to do something that would go against the logic of that character's personality, but the character does not have independence. The character is trapped in the author's hand, in my hand, but he is trapped in a way he does not know he is trapped. The characters are on strings, but the strings are loose; the characters enjoy the illusion of freedom, of independence, but they cannot go where I do not want them to go. When that happens, the author must pull on the string and say to them, I am in charge here.

JOSÉ SARAMAGO

The Paris Review, winter 1998

Tags: José Saramago


All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.

F. SCOTT FITZGERALD

undated letter to his daughter "Scottie"

Tags: F. Scott Fitzgerald


You must write according to your feelings, be sure those feelings are true, and let everything else go hang.

JULIAN BARNES

Flaubert's Parrot

Tags: Julian Barnes


What writers do is they tell their own story constantly through other people's stories. They imagine other people, and those other people are carrying the burden of their struggles, their questions about themselves.

TOBIAS WOLFF

Fiction Writers Review, April 5, 2009

Tags: Tobias Wolff


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


There is a realm of possible knowledge which can be reached by artists, which is not susceptible of mathematical verification but which is true. This is sometimes spoken as the ineffable. If there is any word I detest in the language, this would be it, but the fact that it exists, the word ineffable, is suspicious in that it suggests that there might be something that is ineffable. And I believe that that's the place artists are trying to get to, and I further believe that when they are successful, they reach it.

DONALD BARTHELME

"A Symposium of Fiction"


The art of the word is painting + architecture + music.

YEVGENY ZAMYATIN

The New Russian Prose

Tags: Yevgeny Zamyatin


Perhaps the pleasure one feels in writing is not the infallible test of the literary value of a page; perhaps it is only a secondary state which is often superadded, but the want of which can have no prejudicial effect on it. Perhaps some of the greatest masterpieces were written while yawning.

MARCEL PROUST

Within a Budding Grove

Tags: Marcel Proust


One forges one's style on the terrible anvil of daily deadlines.

EMILE ZOLA

Le Figaro


My plots are always rudimentary. Whatever I've accomplished certainly does not depend on my virtuosity with plot. Generally I don't even have a plot. What happens is that my characters engage in an action, and out of that action little bits of plot sometimes adhere to the narrative. I never have to worry about lifting a plot, because I don't conceive of a book that way.

NORMAN MAILER

The Paris Review, winter-spring 1964


Much modern prose is praised for its terseness, its scrupulous avoidance of curlicue, etcetera. But I don't feel the deeper rhythm there. I don't think these writers are being terse out of choice. I think they are being terse because it's the only way they can write.

MARTIN AMIS

The Paris Review, spring 1998


If I write novels in a country in which most citizens are illiterate, who then is my community?

CHINUA ACHEBE

Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays


I'm sympathetic with new writers who focus so much on the beginning. That's what you show friends or beta readers to see if you are just wasting your time or if there's something there. But you won't really know until you finish the whole book.

JEFF ABBOTT

"Rules of Fiction with Jeff Abbott", Suspense Magazine, January 19, 2017

Tags: Jeff Abbott


I turn sentences around. That's my life. I write a sentence and then I turn it around. Then I look at it and turn it around again.

PHILIP ROTH

Ghost Writer

Tags: Philip Roth


I think I have spoken before about the writer, the artist being a kind of dredging net going down into the rich silt of the mind, of the spirit, to bring up things that are normally out of reach or not accessible to consciousness. It's the duty of the writer -- and indeed of all artists -- to think long and deeply and to be able to drill down into those substrata so that these contents are released. Also, I think that as you drill down there is a release in all of the senses because great pressures build up in people and they don't know why. Quite often something very simple, a way of elucidating it, a way of telling the story, can release that and relieve it and make them feel, Yes, that's what is happening to me, or, This is how I feel. Then immediately one is taken off that horrible little rock of chaos where one is entirely alone and brought back into the community.

JEANETTE WINTERSON

The Paris Review, winter 1997

Tags: Jeanette Winterson


I met a young woman the other day, and she said, what advice would you have for a writer, and I said it would be to work every day. But then she said, and how do you get to know someone like Ira Glass? And I said, that's not the point. You don't befriend people for that reason. I was just lucky and Ira happened to be in a place where I was reading one night and heard me read. I didn't invite him to come there. If I had gone out of my way to invite him, he probably wouldn't have come. Your job is to write. The rest of it will take care of itself. But, generally, it seems ... you know how that is, you meet people and they have a talent for self-promotion. Those are the pushy people. And you know their writing's not going to be any good, because that's not their talent.

DAVID SEDARIS

Oasis Magazine, June 2008


I like to have a hero a little underpowered. I mean, Spiderman is far cooler than Superman. How do you challenge Superman?

PATRICIA BRIGGS

interview, Bitten by Books, March 30, 2010

Tags: Patricia Briggs