WRITING QUOTES II
quotations about writing
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It is always vaunting, of course, to imagine yourself inside another person, but it is what a story writer does in every piece of work; it is his first step, and his last too, I suppose.
EUDORA WELTY
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One Writer's Beginnings
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If you will describe the people--nay, if you will write for the people, you must be one of the people.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader, not the fact that it's raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.
E. L. DOCTOROW
attributed, Stein on Writing
The good writing of any age has always been the product of someone's neurosis, and we'd have a mighty dull literature if all the writers that came along were a bunch of happy chuckleheads.
WILLIAM STYRON
attributed, Writers at Work
It may appear flippant to tell aspiring writers that if they want to learn to write well, they should begin by writing: something, anything. That's how the best writers started and that's how all of us continue to write.
ALI MADEEH HASHMI
"The art of writing", The News on Sunday, March 11, 2017
Indeed, being a beginner is very difficult right now. Book publishers are in a crisis, sales are dwindling, and publishing houses are losing money, doing their best to survive. It's a sign of the times, the emergence of new kinds of entertainment -- there's nothing we can do about it. I don't think books will perish for good. They could become less widespread, though, falling even further behind movies and computer games. But we shouldn't be afraid of this, because books will always remain the entertainment of choice for intelligent people, of whom there are still many in this world.
SERGEI LUKYANENKO
interview, The Telegraph, October 5, 2012
A writer's greatest pleasure is revealing to people things they knew but did not know they knew. Or did not realize everyone else knew, too. This produces a warm sense of fellow feeling and is the best a writer can do.
ANDY ROONEY
"A Few Words from Andy Rooney: A Face of America Commentary"
I suffer as always from the fear of putting down the first line. It is amazing the terrors, the magics, the prayers, the straitening shyness that assail one. It is as though the words were not only indelible but that they spread out like dye in water and color everything around them. A strange and mystic business, writing.
JOHN STEINBECK
The Paris Review, fall 1975
I've never been able to write a book without one very strong character in my rucksack.
JOHN LE CARRÉ
interview, The Paris Review, summer 1997
My theory of the uses of fiction is that beneficent fiction calls into full life our total range of imaginative faculties and gives us a heightened sense of our personal, social and human reality.
CHINUA ACHEBE
Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays
In his prime the Hollywood screenwriter was one of the tragic figures of our age, evoking the special anguish that arises from feeling sorry for oneself while making large amounts of money.
J. G. BALLARD
A User's Guide to the Millennium
The author should die once he has finished writing. So as not to trouble the path of the text.
UMBERTO ECO
postscript, The Name of the Rose
If I've already figured out how the book ends, why bother to finish writing it? My writing isn't terribly efficient, because I often have to backtrack a bit when I change my mind, but I like the sense of discovery that comes from not knowing what happens next.
PATRICIA BRIGGS
interview, Bitten by Books, March 30, 2010
The writer should never be ashamed of staring. There is nothing that does not require his attention.
FLANNERY O'CONNOR
attributed, Room to Write: Daily Invitations to a Writer's Life
Whoop! 6K words, 21 pages, and 8 miles on the treadmill -- DONE! #ProductiveDay #LetThereBeIceCream
VICTORIA LAURIE
Twitter post, December 21, 2014
With a practice of writing comes a certain important integrity. A culture filled with bloggers thinks differently about politics or public affairs, if only because more have been forced through the discipline of showing in writing why A leads to B.
LAWRENCE LESSIG
Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy
Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay. I'm always irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It is a plunge into reality and it's very shocking to the system.
FLANNERY O'CONNOR
Mystery and Manners
Writing is rewriting. It's all about building off of what you have and making it better.
DASHA FAYVINOVA
"9 Reasons Joining A Writing Group Is One Of The Best Ways A Writer Can Grow", Bustle, February 8, 2016
A line will take us hours maybe;
Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought,
Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
"Adam's Curse", In the Seven Woods
A little while back I observed that many people are put off writing because they fear committing one or more of the innumerable errors that seem to lie in wait for them at every step of composition. But if one understands that a sentence is a structure of logical relationships and that the number of relationships involved is finite, one understands too that there is only one error to worry about, the error of being illogical, and only one rule to follow: make sure that every component of your sentence is related to the other components in a way that is clear and unambiguous (unless ambiguity is what you are aiming at).
STANLEY FISH
How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One