WRITING QUOTES XVIII

quotations about writing

Well, the secret to writing is writing. It's only a secret to people who don't want to hear it. Writing is how you be a writer.

URSULA K. LE GUIN

The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination

Tags: Ursula K. Le Guin


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

The Paris Review, fall 1995


Nothing bad can happen to a writer. Everything is material.

PHILIP ROTH

attributed, Literary Agents: How to Get & Work With the Right One For You


I never write in the daytime. It's like running through the shopping mall with your clothes off. Everybody can see you. At night ... that's when you pull the tricks ... magic.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI

Interview Magazine, September 1987

Tags: Charles Bukowski


I gotta pound the keys for the ideas to flow.

KIRBY LARSON

interview, Author Turf, March 6, 2014

Tags: Kirby Larson


I write because I hate. A lot. Hard.

WILLIAM H. GASS

The Paris Review, summer 1977

Tags: William H. Gass


A great writer creates a world of his own and his readers are proud to live in it. A lesser writer may entice them in for a moment, but soon he will watch them filing out.

CYRIL CONNOLLY

Enemies of Promise


When I write I don't aim to shock people, and I'm surprised when I do. But I don't think that anything that occurs in life should be omitted from art, though the artist should present it in a fashion that is artistic and not ugly. I set out to tell the truth. And sometimes the truth is shocking.

TENNESSEE WILLIAMS

The Paris Review, fall 1981


I met a young woman the other day, and she said, what advice would you have for a writer, and I said it would be to work every day. But then she said, and how do you get to know someone like Ira Glass? And I said, that's not the point. You don't befriend people for that reason. I was just lucky and Ira happened to be in a place where I was reading one night and heard me read. I didn't invite him to come there. If I had gone out of my way to invite him, he probably wouldn't have come. Your job is to write. The rest of it will take care of itself. But, generally, it seems ... you know how that is, you meet people and they have a talent for self-promotion. Those are the pushy people. And you know their writing's not going to be any good, because that's not their talent.

DAVID SEDARIS

Oasis Magazine, June 2008


There is only one way to make money at writing, and that is to marry a publisher's daughter.

GEORGE ORWELL

Down and Out in Paris and London

Tags: George Orwell


I always have the feeling that I'm never going to be able to write anything funny again. That's why I keep writing funny things. I have to prove to myself that I'm wrong.

RITA RUDNER

interview, Huffington Post, March 18, 2013

Tags: Rita Rudner


Everybody writes a book too many.

MORDECAI RICHLER

"Sayings of the Week", The Observor, January 9, 1985

Tags: Mordecai Richler


To write is to act.

HENRI-DOMINIQUE LACORDAIRE

Letters to Young Men

Tags: Henri-Dominique Lacordaire


The chief advantage that ancient writers can boast over modern ones, seems owing to simplicity. Every noble truth and sentiment was expressed by the former in the natural manner; in word and phrase, simple, perspicuous, and incapable of improvement. What then remained for later writers but affectation, witticism, and conceit?

WILLIAM SHENSTONE

Essays on Men and Manners


Fiction writing is like duck hunting. You go to the right place at the right time with the right dog. You get into the water before dawn, wearing a little protective gear, then you stand behind some reeds and wait for the story to present itself. This is not to say you are passive. You choose the place and the day. You pick the gun and the dog. You have the desire to blow the duck apart for reasons that are entirely your own. But you have to be willing to accept not what you wanted to have happen, but what happens. You have to write the story you find in the circumstances you've created, because more often than not the ducks don't show up. The hunters in the next blind begin to argue, and you realize they're in love. You see a snake swimming in your direction. Your dog begins to shiver and whine, and you start to think about this gun that belonged to your father. By the time you get out of the marsh, you will have written a novel so devoid of ducks it will shock you.

ANN PATCHETT

What Now?

Tags: Ann Patchett


Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.

FLANNERY O'CONNOR

attributed, The Book of Poisonous Quotes

Tags: Flannery O'Connor


The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.

ALBERT CAMUS

attributed, 2012: Waking of the Prophets

Tags: Albert Camus


Getting even is one great reason for writing.... But getting even isn't necessarily vicious. There are two ways of getting even: one is destructive and the other is restorative. It depends on how the scales are weighted.

WILLIAM H. GASS

The Paris Review, summer 1977


Popular success is a palace built for a writer by publishers, journalists, admirers and professional reputation makers, in which a silent army of termites, rats, dry rot and death-watch beetles are tunnelling away, till, at the very moment of completion, it is ready to fall down. The one hope for a writer is that although his enemies are often unseen they are seldom unheard. He must listen for the death-watch, listen for the faint toc-toc, the critic's truth sharpened by envy, the embarrassed praise of a sincere friend, the silence of gifted contemporaries, the implications of the don in the manger, the visitor in the small hours. He must dismiss the builders and contractors, elude the fans with an assumed name and dark glasses, force his way off the moving staircase, subject every thing he writes to a supreme critical court. Would it amuse Horace or Milton or Swift or Leopardi? Could it be read to Flaubert? Would it be chosen by the Infallible Worm, by the discriminating palates of the dead?

CYRIL CONNOLLY

Enemies of Promise


I would say that the writers I like and trust have at the base of their prose something called the English sentence. An awful lot of modern writing seems to me to be a depressed use of language. Once, I called it "vow-of-poverty prose." No, give me the king in his countinghouse. Give me Updike.

MARTIN AMIS

The Paris Review, spring 1998