WRITING QUOTES X

quotations about writing

The demand that I make of my reader is that he should devote his whole life to reading my works.

JAMES JOYCE

interview with Max Eastman, Harper's Magazine, 1929?

Tags: James Joyce


Write as the wind blows and command all words like an army!

HILAIRE BELLOC

The Path to Rome

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I've never written the things I'd like to write that I've admired all my life. Maybe one never does.

ELIZABETH BISHOP

Conversations with Elizabeth Bishop

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I'm not interested in writing short stories. Anything that doesn't take years of your life and drive you to suicide hardly seems worth doing.

CORMAC MCCARTHY

The Washington Post, November 13, 2009


In secluding himself too much from society, an author is in danger of losing that intimate acquaintance with life which is the only sure foundation of power in a writer.

CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE

Intuitions and Summaries of Thought

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The privilege of being a writer is that you have this opportunity to slow down and to consider things.

CHRIS ABANI

interview, UTNE Reader, June 2010

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Every writer is an iron-monger that melts down old junk into new steel.

AUSTIN O'MALLEY

Keystones of Thought

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My father was a writer, so I grew up writing and reading and I was really encouraged by him. I had some sort of gift and when it came time to try to find a publisher I had a little bit of an "in" because I had his agent I could turn to, to at least read my initial offerings when I was about 20. But the only problem was that they were just awful, they were just terrible stories and my agent, who ended up being my agent, was very, very sweet about it, but it took about four years until I actually had something worth trying to sell.

ANNE LAMOTT

interview, Big Think, April 6, 2010


Transitions are usually not that interesting. I use space breaks instead, and a lot of them. A space break makes a clean segue whereas some segues you try to write sound convenient, contrived. The white space sets off, underscores, the writing presented, and you have to be sure it deserves to be highlighted this way. If used honestly and not as a gimmick, these spaces can signify the way the mind really works, noting moments and assembling them in such a way that a kind of logic or pattern comes forward, until the accretion of moments forms a whole experience, observation, state of being. The connective tissue of a story is often the white space, which is not empty.

AMY HEMPEL

The Paris Review, summer 2003

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When I'm writing I find it's the only time that I feel completely self-possessed, even when the writing itself is not going too well. It's fine therapy for people who are perpetually scared of nameless threats as I am most of the time.

WILLIAM STYRON

The Paris Review, spring 1954


Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing.

NORMAN MAILER

The New York Times Book Review, September 17, 1965

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Writers are a little below clowns and a little above trained seals.

JOHN STEINBECK

Quote Magazine, June 18, 1961

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There are probably seven persons, in all, who really like my work; and they are enough. I should write even if I were the only patient reader, for my aim is merely self-expression.

H. P. LOVECRAFT

"The Defence Remains Open!"

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A man always writes absolutely well whenever he writes in his own manner, but the wigmaker who tries to write like Gellert ... writes badly.

GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG

"Notebook B", The Waste Books

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Things may not be immediately discernible in what a man writes, and in this sometimes he is fortunate; but eventually they are quite clear and by these and the degree of alchemy that he possesses he will endure or be forgotten.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY

Nobel Prize speech, December 10, 1954

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Write books only if you are going to say in them the things you would never dare confide to anyone.

EMIL CIORAN

The Trouble with Being Born

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I can't avoid writing. It's a sort of nervous tic I have developed since I gave up needlepoint.

CLARE BOOTHE LUCE

"Fast and Luce", Vanity Fair, March 1988

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A great writer has a high respect for values. His essential function is to raise life to the dignity of thought, and this he does by giving it a shape.

ANDRÉ MAUROIS

The Art of Writing

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In a very real way, one writes a story to find out what happens in it. Before it is written it sits in the mind like a piece of overheard gossip or a bit of intriguing tattle. The story process is like taking up such a piece of gossip, hunting down the people actually involved, questioning them, finding out what really occurred, and visiting pertinent locations. As with gossip, you can't be too surprised if important things turn up that were left out of the first-heard version entirely; or if points initially made much of turn out to have been distorted, or simply not to have happened at all.

SAMUEL R. DELANY

The Jewel-Hinged Jaw


Writing can wreck your body. You sit there on the chair hour after hour and sweat your guts out to get a few words.

NORMAN MAILER

The New York Times, October 4, 2000