WRITING QUOTES XXX

quotations about writing

I'm writing a first draft and reminding myself that I'm simply shoveling sand into a box so that later I can build castles.

SHANNON HALE

attributed, The Novel-Writing Plan


If you are to become a writer you'll have to stop fooling with words.

SHERWOOD ANDERSON

"The Teacher", Winesburg, Ohio

Tags: Sherwood Anderson


If you don't have the time to read, you don't have the time or the tools to write.

STEPHEN KING

On Writing

Tags: Stephen King


The artist deals with what cannot be said in words. The artist whose medium is fiction does this in words. The novelist says in words what cannot be said in words.

URSULA K. LE GUIN

introduction, The Left Hand of Darkness

Tags: Ursula K. Le Guin


Fiction writers, at least in their braver moments, do desire the truth: to know it, speak it, serve it. But they go about it in a peculiar and devious way, which consists in inventing persons, places, and events which never did and never will exist or occur, and telling about these fictions in detail and at length and with a great deal of emotion, and then when they are done writing down this pack of lies, they say, There! That's the truth!

URSULA K. LE GUIN

introduction, The Left Hand of Darkness

Tags: Ursula K. Le Guin


The old, slow, creaking descriptions are a thing of the past; today the rule is brevity -- but every word must be supercharged, high-voltage.

YEVGENY ZAMYATIN

A Soviet Heretic

Tags: Yevgeny Zamyatin


A writer never forgets the first time he accepted a few coins or a word of praise in exchange for a story. He will never forget the sweet poison of vanity in his blood and the belief that, if he succeeds in not letting anyone discover his lack of talent, the dream of literature will provide him with a roof over his head, a hot meal at the end of the day, and what he covets the most: his name printed on a miserable piece of paper that surely will outlive him. A writer is condemned to remember that moment, because from then on he is doomed and his soul has a price.

CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON

The Angel's Game

Tags: Carlos Ruiz Zafon


Even though language has its richness the relationship between language and the writer is always like a stone and you have to make the stone human.

CARMEN BOULLOSA

Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, Vol. 4, No. 2, 1995

Tags: Carmen Boullosa


I don't actually talk about my books much, because I find if I talk about them I don't want to write them anymore. I write to find out what happens. You know how you read a book? That's what I'm doing except I'm just doing it a lot slower because it takes a lot longer to do.

CHARLES DE LINT

"Music and Myth: A Conversation with Charles de Lint", The Internet Review of Science Fiction

Tags: Charles de Lint


Most writers -- poets in especial -- prefer having it understood that they compose by a species of fine frenzy -- an ecstatic intuition -- and would positively shudder at letting the public take a peep behind the scenes, at the elaborate and vacillating crudities of thought -- at the true purposes seized only at the last moment -- at the innumerable glimpses of idea that arrived not at the maturity of full view -- at the fully matured fancies discarded in despair as unmanageable -- at the cautious selections and rejections -- at the painful erasures and interpolations -- in a word, at the wheels and pinions -- the tackle for scene-shifting -- the step-ladders and demon-traps -- the cock's feathers, the red paint and the black patches, which, in ninety-nine cases out of the hundred, constitute the properties of the literary histrio.

EDGAR ALLAN POE

"The Philosophy of Composition"


The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof, shit detector. This is the writer's radar and all great writers have had it.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY

Paris Review, spring 1958


When I write, I don't know what is going to emerge. I begin in a condition of complete unknowing, an utter nakedness of concept or goal. A word appears, another word appears, an image. It is a moving into mystery.

JANE HIRSHFIELD

The Atlantic Online, September 18, 1997

Tags: Jane Hirshfield


Keep your head down, avoid all the distractions of being a writer today--all the shifts in the business, all the drama, all the debating about where publishing is going--and write the best story that you can. It sounds a bit glib, but I think this is advice a lot of people are having trouble following right now. It is so hard to focus. But that is the single key to success.

JEFF ABBOTT

The Big Thrill, June 30, 2013

Tags: Jeff Abbott


First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you're inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won't. Habit is persistence in practice.

OCTAVIA E. BUTLER

"Furor Scribendi", Bloodchild and Other Stories


A day in which I don't write leaves a taste of ashes.

SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR

attributed, Writers on Writing

Tags: Simone de Beauvoir


At the age of fourteen I discovered writing as an escape from a world of reality in which I felt acutely uncomfortable.

TENNESSEE WILLIAMS

foreword, Sweet Bird of Youth

Tags: Tennessee Williams


A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.

THOMAS MANN

Essays of Three Decades


Fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners. Often the attachment is scarcely perceptible; Shakespeare's plays, for instance, seem to hang there complete by themselves. But when the web is pulled askew, hooked up at the edge, torn in the middle, one remembers that these webs are not spun in midair by incorporeal creatures, but are the work of suffering human beings, and are attached to the grossly material things, like health and money and the houses we live in.

VIRGINIA WOOLF

A Room of One's Own

Tags: Virginia Woolf


Writing can't be a way of life -- the important part of writing is living. You have to live in such a way that your writing emerges from it.

DORIS LESSING

Doris Lessing: Conversations

Tags: Doris Lessing


I think writing for me has always been a matter of fear. Writing is fear and not writing is fear. I am afraid of writing and then I'm afraid of not writing.

FRAN LEBOWITZ

"In Conversation: Fran Lebowitz with Phong Bui", The Brooklyn Rail, March 4, 2014

Tags: Fran Lebowitz