WRITING QUOTES XX

quotations about writing

I think I have spoken before about the writer, the artist being a kind of dredging net going down into the rich silt of the mind, of the spirit, to bring up things that are normally out of reach or not accessible to consciousness. It's the duty of the writer -- and indeed of all artists -- to think long and deeply and to be able to drill down into those substrata so that these contents are released. Also, I think that as you drill down there is a release in all of the senses because great pressures build up in people and they don't know why. Quite often something very simple, a way of elucidating it, a way of telling the story, can release that and relieve it and make them feel, Yes, that's what is happening to me, or, This is how I feel. Then immediately one is taken off that horrible little rock of chaos where one is entirely alone and brought back into the community.

JEANETTE WINTERSON

The Paris Review, winter 1997

Tags: Jeanette Winterson


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


If a high quality of writing is to occur, it is reasonable to acknowledge that an open mind and a critical ear are essential tools that are used during all phases of revision.

GARRETT SAYERS

"Reading Aloud Is Essential to Quality Writing", Liberty Voice, January 31, 2016


In the very act of writing I felt pleased with what I did. There was the pleasure of having words come to me, and the pleasure of ordering them, re-ordering them, weighing one against another. Pleasure also in the imagination of the story, the feeling that it could mean something. Mostly I was glad to find out that I could write at all. In writing you work toward a result you won't see for years, and can't be sure you'll ever see. It takes stamina and self-mastery and faith. It demands those things of you, then gives them back with a little extra, a surprise to keep you coming. It toughens you and clears your head. I could feel it happening. I was saving my life with every word I wrote, and I knew it.

TOBIAS WOLFF

In Pharaoh's Army


It is usual that the moment you write for publication--I mean one of course--one stiffens in exactly the same way one does when one is being photographed. The simplest way to overcome this is to write it to someone, like me. Write it as a letter aimed at one person. This removes the vague terror of addressing the large and faceless audience and it also, you will find, will give a sense of freedom and a lack of self-consciousness.

JOHN STEINBECK

The Paris Review, fall 1975


Many great writers address audiences who do not exist; to address passionately and sometimes with very great wisdom people who do not exist has this advantage--that there will always be a group of people who, seeing a man shouting apparently at somebody or other, and seeing nobody else in sight, will think it is they who are being addressed.

WYNDHAM LEWIS

The Art of Being Ruled

Tags: Wyndham Lewis


My father really taught me that you really develop the habit of writing and you sit down at the same time every day, you don't wait for inspiration. You sit down, it helps your subconscious understand that it's time to start writing and to relax down into that well of dream material and memory and imagination. So, I sit down at the exact same time every day. And I let myself write really awful first drafts of things. I take very short assignments; I will capture for myself in a few words what I'm going to be trying to do that morning, or in that hour. Maybe I'm going to write a description of the lake out in Inverness in West Marin, where I live. And so I try to keep things really small and manageable. I have a one-inch picture frame on my desk so I can remember that that's all I'm going to be able to see in the course of an hour or two, and then I just let myself start and it goes really badly most mornings; as it does for most writers.

ANNE LAMOTT

interview, Big Think, April 6, 2010

Tags: Anne Lamott


Nothing can destroy the good writer. The only thing that can alter the good writer is death. Good ones don't have time to bother with success or getting rich.

WILLIAM FAULKNER

The Paris Review, spring 1956

Tags: William Faulkner


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


The first forms of writing emerged not for art, literature, or love, not for spiritual or liturgical purposes, but for business--all literature could be said to originate from sales receipts (sorry).

DANIEL J. LEVITIN

The Organized Mind

Tags: Daniel J. Levitin


There is a realm of possible knowledge which can be reached by artists, which is not susceptible of mathematical verification but which is true. This is sometimes spoken as the ineffable. If there is any word I detest in the language, this would be it, but the fact that it exists, the word ineffable, is suspicious in that it suggests that there might be something that is ineffable. And I believe that that's the place artists are trying to get to, and I further believe that when they are successful, they reach it.

DONALD BARTHELME

"A Symposium of Fiction"


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


To finish is sadness to a writer--a little death. He puts the last word down and it is done. But it isn't really done. The story goes on and leaves the writer behind, for no story is ever done.

JOHN STEINBECK

The Paris Review, fall 1975


Writers aren't people exactly. Or, if they're any good, they're a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person. It's like actors, who try so pathetically not to look in mirrors. Who lean backward trying--only to see their faces in the reflecting chandeliers.

F. SCOTT FITZGERALD

The Last Tycoon

Tags: F. Scott Fitzgerald


Writing, in whatever form, is your own personal progress report. There's nothing I love more than curling up with tea and reading back over my past, error-riddled posts. It's an indescribable connection that you simply can't get from a photo or memory alone. Think of it as the only true insight your future self has into you, as you are today. Blog for yourself and the rest will follow.

BIANCA BASS

"Why You Should Write (Even If It Feels Like Nobody Is Listening)", Huffington Post, February 29, 2016


All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.

F. SCOTT FITZGERALD

undated letter to his daughter "Scottie"

Tags: F. Scott Fitzgerald


Any writer of any worth at all hopes to play only a pocket-torch of light -- and rarely, through genius, a sudden flambeau -- into the bloody yet beautiful labyrinth of human experience, of being.

NADINE GORDIMER

Nobel Lecture, December 7, 1991

Tags: Nadine Gordimer


As we understand it, the surest way to make a living by the pen is to raise pigs.

ROBERT ELLIOTT GONZALES

Poems and Paragraphs

Tags: Robert Elliott Gonzales


Everybody can write; writers can't do anything else.

MIGNON MCLAUGHLIN

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook

Tags: Mignon McLaughlin


I didn't want to be ignored. I didn't want my books to be ignored. But I didn't really care to cut such a figure either because ... well, it interferes with the business of writing.

SAUL BELLOW

Q & A at Howard Community College, February 1986