WRITING QUOTES IV

quotations about writing

Writing quote

For me, writing is just a thing I need to do everyday, like breathing or eating.

GUY CAPECELATRO III

"Power of music shines in Capecelatro's heartfelt album", Seacoast Online, March 30, 2017


Writing is a profession you can practice while upside down and experiencing total blackout in a cave. You just use the mental recorder instead of pen and paper ... or portable ... and hope you find a use for the experience.

C. J. CHERRYH

interview, SFF World, January 1, 2000

Tags: C. J. Cherryh


Completing a book, it's a little like having a baby.... There's a feeling of relief and satisfaction when you get to the end. A feeling that you have brought your family, your characters, home. Then a sort of post-natal depression and then, very quickly, the horizon of a new book. The consolation that next time I will do it better.

JOHN LE CARRÉ

interview, The Telegraph, August 31, 2010


I am not at all in a humor for writing; I must write on till I am.

JANE AUSTEN

letter to Cassandra Austen, October 26, 1813

Tags: Jane Austen


Rejections are painful, but inevitable. They're every writer's rite of passage.

OCTAVIA E. BUTLER

"Furor Scribendi", Bloodchild and Other Stories

Tags: Octavia E. Butler


I am not someone who is very good at writing a certain amounts every day. I know that's what one is told one should do, but what I tend to do is kind of sequester myself away while I am in London for a few weeks at a time and become very antisocial and write very, very intensively over a relatively short time. I am much more of a burst writer than a steady-state writer.

CHINA MIÉVILLE

"In a Carapace of Light: A Conversation with China Miéville", Clarkesworld

Tags: China Miéville


It's easy, after all, not to be a writer. Most people aren't writers, and very little harm comes to them.

JULIAN BARNES

Flaubert's Parrot

Tags: Julian Barnes


There's no such thing as perfect writing, just like there's no such thing as perfect despair.

HURAKI MURAKAMI

Hear the Wind Sing

Tags: Haruki Murakami


It is the glory and the merit of some men to write well, and of others not to write at all.

JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE

"Of Works of the Mind", Les Caractères

Tags: Jean de La Bruyère


To subvert is not the aim of literature, its value lies in discovering and revealing what is rarely known, little known, thought to be known but in fact not very well known of the truth of the human world. It would seem that truth is the unassailable and most basic quality of literature.

GAO XINGJIAN

Nobel Lecture, 2000

Tags: Gao Xingjian


If I've already figured out how the book ends, why bother to finish writing it? My writing isn't terribly efficient, because I often have to backtrack a bit when I change my mind, but I like the sense of discovery that comes from not knowing what happens next.

PATRICIA BRIGGS

interview, Bitten by Books, March 30, 2010

Tags: Patricia Briggs


For a sentence is not complete unless each word, once its syllables have been pronounced, gives way to make room for the next.

ST. AUGUSTINE

Confessions

Tags: St. Augustine


I don't write about things that I have the answers to or things that are very close to home. It just wouldn't be any adventure. It wouldn't have any vitality.

ANN BEATTIE

Conversations with Ann Beattie

Tags: Ann Beattie


For those who do not write and who never have been stirred by the creative urge, talk of muses seems a figure of speech, a quaint concept, but for those of us who live by the Word, our muses are as real and necessary as the soft clay of language which they help to sculpt.

DAN SIMMONS

Hyperion


A lot of writers ... sit in a log cabin by the lake and put their feet up by the fire in the silence and write. If you can have that that's all very well, but the true writer will learn to write anywhere -- even in prison.

LOUIS AUCHINCLOSS

The Atlantic, October 15, 1997

Tags: Louis Auchincloss


There would be punishment and pain, and there would be happiness, too. That was writing.

MARKUS ZUSAK

The Book Thief

Tags: Markus Zusak


I was always fascinated by the fact that you could take paper and ink and create worlds, images, characters. It seemed like magic.

CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON

"Q & A: Author Carlos Ruiz Zafon", Time, June 30, 2009

Tags: Carlos Ruiz Zafon


Just as the light and weightless vegetation of saltpeter floats over the old walls of houses as soon as the owner gets careless, so the literary vocation springs up in you.

FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA

letter to Jose Bello, summer 1925

Tags: Federico Garcia Lorca


Every experience shapes your writing, being stuck in a car on a lonely bridge, or dancing at a prom, being the it girl on the beach, all of those things influence your life, they influence how you write, and the topics you choose to write about.

MAYA ANGELOU

Facebook post, October 13, 2012

Tags: Maya Angelou


I'm glad that I didn't have the Internet when I started writing. I started writing when I was 20 and didn't show a word of it to anyone until I was 28. I had the sense to keep it to myself. Now the temptation with blogs and such, they're just getting it out there; maybe it would have been best to keep it to themselves.

DAVID SEDARIS

interview, Bohemian, June 2009