WRITING QUOTES XXIII

quotations about writing


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With films, I just scribble a couple of notes for a scene. You don't have to do any writing at all, you just have your notes for the scene, which are written with the actors and the camera in mind. The actual script is a necessity for casting and budgeting, but the end product often doesn't bear much resemblance to the script--at least in my case.

WOODY ALLEN
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The Paris Review, fall 1995


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When I first started I was obsessed--putting in 16 hours a day, seven days a week, and loving it. My in-laws told my husband that perhaps he should get some help for me. Once the book was published it was OK because writers can be a little crazy.

JEAN M. AUEL

interview, goodreads, April 2011

Tags: Jean M. Auel


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 reason a writer writes a book is to forget a book and the reason a reader reads one is to remember it.

THOMAS WOLFE

The Autobiography of an American Novelist


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


So much of a novelist's writing, as I have said, takes place in the unconscious: in those depths the last word is written before the first word appears on the paper. We remember details of our story, we do not invent them.

GRAHAM GREENE

The End of the Affair


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

EMILE ZOLA

Le Figaro


Nowadays three witty turns of phrase and a lie make a writer.

GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG

"Notebook D", Aphorisms

Tags: Georg Christoph Lichtenberg


Mostly, we authors must repeat ourselves--that's the truth. We have two or three great moving experiences in our lives--experiences so great and moving that it doesn't seem at the time that anyone else has been so caught up and pounded and dazzled and astonished and beaten and broken and rescued and illuminated and rewarded and humbled in just that way ever before.

F. SCOTT FITZGERALD

"One Hundred False Starts", Saturday Evening Post, March 4, 1933


If you over-plot your book you strangle your characters. Your characters have to have enough freedom and life to be able to surprise you.

ALAN LIGHTMAN

interview, Identity Theory, November 16, 2000

Tags: Alan Lightman


I'm pretty obsessive-compulsive and I'm very fast. I tend to not write for a long period of time until I can't not write, and then I write first drafts in gallops. I won't eat right. I forget to do my laundry. I have a dog now, and I have to remember to walk him. When I write, that takes over and I can't do anything else. There's something exciting about that free fall, but then my life gets really screwed up. I've lost lots of relationships because of my having to ignore everything.

ADAM RAPP

interview, Theatre Communications Group

Tags: Adam Rapp


I write because I hate. A lot. Hard.

WILLIAM H. GASS

The Paris Review, summer 1977

Tags: William H. Gass


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 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 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 Writing Is Garbage. People who come out of nowhere to try to put into words any part of what goes on in their minds are pigs. The whole literary scene is a pigpen, especially today.

ANTONIN ARTAUD

Selected Writings

Tags: Antonin Artaud


You must keep sending work out; you must never let a manuscript do nothing but eat its head off in a drawer. You send that work out again and again, while you're working on another one. If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success -- but only if you persist.

ISAAC ASIMOV

attributed, How to Become a Famous Writer Before You're Dead

Tags: Isaac Asimov


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 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"

Tags: Walter Bargen


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