WRITING QUOTES XIII

quotations about writing

With pen and with pencil we're learning to say
Nothing, more cleverly every day.

WILLIAM ALLINGHAM

"Blackberries"

Tags: William Allingham


I consider a story merely as a frame on which to stretch my materials.

WASHINGTON IRVING

introduction, Tales of a Traveler

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Think what it would mean if you could teach, or if you could learn the art of writing. Why, every book, every newspaper you'd pick up, would tell the truth, or create beauty. But there is, it would appear, some obstacle in the way, some hindrance to the teaching of words. For though at this moment at least a hundred professors are lecturing on the literature of the past, at least a thousand critics are reviewing the literature of the present, and hundreds upon hundreds of young men and women are passing examinations in English literature with the utmost credit, still -- do we write better, do we read better than we read and wrote four hundred years ago when we were un-lectured, un-criticized, untaught?

VIRGINIA WOOLF

"Words Fail Me", BBC radio, April 29, 1937

Tags: Virginia Woolf


Dear Aspiring Author; Write with heart. Put that open, honest, bare soul on paper.

VICTORIA LAURIE

Twitter post, December 3, 2014

Tags: Victoria Laurie


I like to have a thing suggested rather than told in full. When every detail is given, the mind rests satisfied, and the imagination loses the desire to use its own wings. The partly draped statue has a charm which the nude lacks. Who would have those marble folds slip from the raised knee of the Venus of Melos?

THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH

Ponkapog Papers

Tags: Thomas Bailey Aldrich


There are men that will make you books, and turn them loose into the world, with as much dispatch as they would do a dish of fritters.

MIGUEL DE CERVANTES

Don Quixote

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"Writing" is the Latin of our times. The modern language of the people is video and sound.

LAWRENCE LESSIG

Wikimania 2006

Tags: Lawrence Lessig


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

JOHN STEINBECK

Quote Magazine, June 18, 1961

Tags: John Steinbeck


I believe in writing somewhat quickly, getting the story down; it can be bad, it can be a mess, but the key thing is to get it down.

JEFF ABBOTT

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

Tags: Jeff Abbott


A lot of novelists start late--Conrad, Pirandello, even Mark Twain. When you're young, chess is all right, and music and poetry. But novel-writing is something else. It has to be learned, but it can't be taught. This bunkum and stinkum of college creative writing courses! The academics don't know that the only thing you can do for someone who wants to write is to buy him a typewriter.

JAMES M. CAIN

The Paris Review, spring-summer 1978

Tags: James M. Cain


Any writer, I suppose, feels that the world into which he was born is nothing less than a conspiracy against the cultivation of his talent--which attitude certainly has a great deal to support it. On the other hand, it is only because the world looks on his talent with such frightening indifference that the artist is compelled to make his talent important.

JAMES BALDWIN

Notes of a Native Son

Tags: James Baldwin


If, while observing the boundless universe, the writer is able to scrutinise his own self as well as others, the resulting incisiveness of his observations will far surpass objective descriptions of reality.

GAO XINGJIAN

"Literature as Testimony: The Search for Truth", Witness Literature: Proceedings of the Nobel Centennial Symposium

Tags: Gao Xingjian


Good writers define reality; bad ones merely restate it.

EDWARD ALBEE

Saturday Review, May 4, 1966


Writing is creative, which is right brain activity. Editing is rational, logical and process/rule driven, which is left-brain activity. It seems that, if you switch consistently between the two, the creative process becomes derailed by all the rules and forms. You scare it back into the shadows.

DAVID CHISLETT

"Editing Is Not Writing", Books LIVE, February 12, 2016


My job is not to try to give readers what they want but to try to make readers want what I give.

CHINA MIÉVILLE

The Guardian, September 20, 2012


I held out my book. It was precious to me, as were all the things I'd written; even where I despised their inadequacy there was not one I would disown. Each tore its way from my entrails. Each had shortened my life, killed me with its own special little death.

TANITH LEE

The Book of the Damned

Tags: Tanith Lee


A writer should be able to express himself easily, naturally, copiously in a form that frees his mind, his energies. Why should he hobble himself with formalities?

SAUL BELLOW

The Paris Review, winter 1966


The factors controlling a writer's popularity are as mysterious and ultimately as unknowable as the number of stars in the sky.

SAMUEL R. DELANY

interview, SF Site, April 2001

Tags: Samuel R. Delany


In my view, if you write every day you're a certified graphomaniac, you're OCD, you're addicted to the physical act and not the real, spiritual one.

ROSEMARY JENKINSON

"Writing is not about youth but about spark", Irish Times, March 27, 2017


I try to write every day. I used to try to write four times a day, minimum of three sentences each time. It doesn't sound like much but it's kinda like the hare and the tortoise. If you try that several times a day you're going to do more than three sentences, one of them is going to catch on. You're going to say "Oh boy!" and then you just write. You fill up the page and the next page. But you have a certain minimum so that at the end of the day, you can say "Hey I wrote four times today, three sentences, a dozen sentences. Each sentence is maybe twenty word long. That's 240 words which is a page of copy, so at least I didn't goof off completely today. I got a page for my efforts and tomorrow it might be easier because I've moved as far as I have."

ROGER ZELAZNY

interview, Phlogiston, 1995