WRITING QUOTES XXIII

quotations about writing

The less attention I pay to what people want and the more attention I pay to just writing the book I want to write, the better I do.

LAWRENCE BLOCK

Newsweek, July 13, 2009

Tags: Lawrence Block


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


Occasionally, I'll dream I'm in the factory. That will help me write. Not creatively, but more like a prod. I don't want to go back there.

ROBERT REED

Lincoln Journal Star, January 11, 2004


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


If you want to write ... You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads.

RAY BRADBURY

attributed, Words from the Wise

Tags: Ray Bradbury


If you stuff yourself full of poems, essays, plays, stories, novels, films, comic strips, magazines, music, you automatically explode every morning like Old Faithful. I have never had a dry spell in my life, mainly because I feed myself well, to the point of bursting. I wake early and hear my morning voices leaping around in my head like jumping beans. I get out of bed to trap them before they escape.

RAY BRADBURY

attributed, The Writer's Workout

Tags: Ray Bradbury


I demand that my books be judged with utmost severity, by knowledgeable people who know the rules of grammar and of logic, and who will seek beneath the footsteps of my commas the lice of my thought in the head of my style.

LOUIS ARAGON

Treatise on Style

Tags: Louis Aragon


I couldn't imagine, and I don't say this with any pride, but I really couldn't imagine writing without a desperate deadline.

HUNTER S. THOMPSON

The Paris Review, fall 2000


Having your book turned into a movie is like seeing your oxen turned into bouillon cubes.

JOHN LE CARRÉ

attributed, Bad TV: The Very Best of the Very Worst

Tags: John le Carré


Failure has been my best friend as a writer. It tests you, to see if you have what it takes to see it through.

MARKUS ZUSAK

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


Everything you look at can be turned into a story ... you can make a tale of everything you touch.

HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN

"The Elder Tree Mother"

Tags: Hans Christian Andersen


As far back as I can remember, I've been writing. I've always had this wild imagination, and I love to embellish stories to make them more interesting. When I was a kid I had all these intricate histories for all my stuffed animals and dollhouse families, which I would type out on this old manual typewriter my parents set up for me in the corner of our TV room. I kept writing all through middle school, and in high school I got diverted a bit, but I picked it up again in college. I really didn't think I'd actually be a writer until I graduated and found that I just couldn't stop and go get a real job. Every time I finished something, another idea would follow right behind. So I went into waitressing and just wrote like crazy. At times it seemed really stupid, since I was totally broke and there was no kind of guarantee that I'd ever see anything come of it. Luckily, it did. But even if I hadn't sold a book by now I'd still be writing. It becomes a part of you, just something you do.

SARAH DESSEN

interview, Puffin Books

Tags: Sarah Dessen


Any writer, in whatever form, must first pass through the stage of being a reader. It is unimaginable that someone could become a writer without first being a reader. Only a daydreamer who had fallen into an unhealthy idealism could exoticize a writer in this way. Such misperception is similar to believing that thought is possible without language.

KOBO ABE

The Frontier Within

Tags: Kobo Abe


Writing is eternal,
For therein the dead heart liveth, the clay-cold tongue is eloquent,
And the quick eye of the reader is cleared by the reed of the scribe.
As a fossil in the rock, or a coin in the mortar of a ruin,
So the symbolled thoughts tell of a departed soul:
The plastic hand hath its witness in a statue, and exactitude of vision in a picture,
And so, the mind, that was among us, in its writings is embalmed.

MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER

Proverbial Philosophy

Tags: Martin Farquhar Tupper


Writing is a conversation, to me. The best kind. You can't get interrupted.

GERALD ASHER

speech at the Symposium for Professional Wine Writers, February 2011

Tags: Gerald Asher


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


Without a pen in my hand I can't think.

JOHN LE CARRÉ

interview, The Paris Review, summer 1997

Tags: John le Carré


We live in a world ruled by fictions of every kind--mass merchandising, advertising, politics conducted as a branch of advertising, the instant translation of science and technology into popular imagery, the increasing blurring and intermingling of identities within the realm of consumer goods, the preempting of any free or original imaginative response to experience by the television screen. We live inside an enormous novel. For the writer in particular it is less and less necessary for him to invent the fictional content of his novel. The fiction is already there. The writer's task is to invent the reality.

J. G. BALLARD

Crash

Tags: J. G. Ballard


There is, as yet, no Act of Parliament compelling a bona fide traveler to read. If you wish him to read, you must make reading pleasant. You must give him short views, and clear sentences.

WALTER BAGEHOT

Literary Studies

Tags: Walter Bagehot


The process of creating is related to the process of dreaming although when you are writing you're doing it and when you're dreaming, it's doing you.

ROBERT STONE

attributed, A Writer's Book of Days