WRITING QUOTES XXV

quotations about writing

Genre categories are irrelevant. I dislike them, but I do not have the casting vote. Writing is writing and stories are stories. Perhaps the only true genres are fiction and non-fiction. And even there, who can be sure?

TANITH LEE

Tabula Rasa, October 1994


Fiction -- at least for me -- requires long, relatively uninterrupted time stretches in which to bring it to fruition. I've never been a two-hour-in-the-morning writer, who could put in another six hours on Sunday afternoon. For me, a novel requires weeks of living in a largely mental and wholly internal landscape. Everything else has to be relegated to the odd hour here, the bit of time there. Sadly, however, uninterrupted time blocks are not what life doles out today to any of us with regularity.

SAMUEL R. DELANY

interview, SF Site, April 2001


Everything you look at can be turned into a story ... you can make a tale of everything you touch.

HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN

"The Elder Tree Mother"

Tags: Hans Christian Andersen


Crossing out is an art that is, perhaps, even more difficult than writing. It requires the sharpest eye to decide what is superfluous and must be removed. And it requires ruthlessness toward yourself -- the greatest ruthlessness and self-sacrifice. You must know how to sacrifice parts in the name of the whole.

YEVGENY ZAMYATIN

Theme and Plot

Tags: Yevgeny Zamyatin


All stories are about wolves. All worth repeating, that is. Anything else is sentimental drivel.

MARGARET ATWOOD

The Blind Assassin

Tags: Margaret Atwood


A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul, and that, I am sure, is why he does it.

ROALD DAHL

Boy

Tags: Roald Dahl


You must keep sending work out; you must never let a manuscript do nothing but eat its head off in a drawer. You send that work out again and again, while you're working on another one. If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success -- but only if you persist.

ISAAC ASIMOV

attributed, How to Become a Famous Writer Before You're Dead

Tags: Isaac Asimov


Writing is a conversation, to me. The best kind. You can't get interrupted.

GERALD ASHER

speech at the Symposium for Professional Wine Writers, February 2011

Tags: Gerald Asher


Writing a novel is like working on foreign policy. There are problems to be solved. It's not all inspirational.

JAMES M. CAIN

The Paris Review, spring-summer 1978


What writers do is they tell their own story constantly through other people's stories. They imagine other people, and those other people are carrying the burden of their struggles, their questions about themselves.

TOBIAS WOLFF

Fiction Writers Review, April 5, 2009

Tags: Tobias Wolff


Wearing down seven number-two pencils is a good day's work.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY

The Paris Review, spring 1958

Tags: Ernest Hemingway


There is no way of writing well and also of writing easily.

ANTHONY TROLLOPE

Barchester Towers

Tags: Anthony Trollope


The true alchemists do not change lead into gold; they change the world into words.

WILLIAM H. GASS

A Temple of Texts

Tags: William H. Gass


The process of creating is related to the process of dreaming although when you are writing you're doing it and when you're dreaming, it's doing you.

ROBERT STONE

attributed, A Writer's Book of Days


The greater the length, the more beautiful will the piece be by reason of its size, provided that the whole be perspicuous.

ARISTOTLE

Poetics

Tags: Aristotle


Someone watches over us when we write. Mother. Teacher. Shakespeare. God.

MARTIN AMIS

London Fields

Tags: Martin Amis


No reason at all why one should go on writing just for the sake of it. I think it is very important to stop when you haven't got anything to say.

JULIAN BARNES

The Paris Review, winter 2000


Madness is terrific I can assure you, and not to be sniffed at; and in its lava I still find most of the things I write about. It shoots out of one everything shaped, final, not in mere driblets, as sanity does.

VIRGINIA WOOLF

Letters

Tags: Virginia Woolf


It's a principle of mine to come into the story as late as possible, and to tell it as fast as you can.

JOHN LE CARRÉ

interview, The Paris Review, summer 1997

Tags: John le Carré


In the end, the writer is not even allowed to live in his writing.

THEODOR W. ADORNO

Minima Moralia

Tags: Theodor W. Adorno