WRITING QUOTES V

quotations about writing

Composition is a process of combination, in which thought puts together complementary truths, and talent fuses into harmony the most contrary qualities of style. So that there is no composition without effort, without pain even, as in all bringing forth. The reward is the giving birth to something living--something, that is to say, which, by a kind of magic, makes a living unity out of such opposed attributes as orderliness and spontaneity, thought and imagination, solidity and charm.

HENRI-FREDERIC AMIEL

Journal Intime

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Grammar is a piano I play by ear, since I seem to have been out of school the year the rules were mentioned. All I know about grammar is its power.

JOAN DIDION

Joan Didion: Essays & Conversations

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When asked for advice by beginners. Know your ending, I say, or the river of your story may finally sink into the desert sands and never reach the sea.

ISAAC ASIMOV

I, Asimov: A Memoir

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To me, writing is not a profession. You might as well call living a profession. Or having children. Anything you can't help doing.

VICKI BAUM

I Know What I'm Worth

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For those who do not write and who never have been stirred by the creative urge, talk of muses seems a figure of speech, a quaint concept, but for those of us who live by the Word, our muses are as real and necessary as the soft clay of language which they help to sculpt.

DAN SIMMONS

Hyperion


I don't write about things that I have the answers to or things that are very close to home. It just wouldn't be any adventure. It wouldn't have any vitality.

ANN BEATTIE

Conversations with Ann Beattie

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Rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, don't be precious about your first draft, it's an architectural blueprint to a whole building, be your own worst critic, confront your weakness and remember it's a craft.

TOBSHA LEARNER

interview, Booktopia, February 22, 2011

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All writing, all art, is an act of faith. If one tries to contribute to human understanding, how can that be called decadent? It's like saying a declaration of love is an act of decadence. Any work of art, provide it springs from a sincere motivation to further understanding between people, is an act of faith and therefore is an act of love.

TRUMAN CAPOTE

Truman Capote: Conversations

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Anything that happens to you has some bearing upon what you write.

JOHN DOS PASSOS

The Paris Review, spring 1969


I don't think it is worth explaining how a character's nose or chin looks. It is my feeling that readers will prefer to construct, little by little, their own character--the author will do well to entrust the reader with this part of the work.

JOSÉ SARAMAGO

The Paris Review, winter 1998


When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth.

KURT VONNEGUT

attributed, The Biteback Dictionary of Humorous Literary Quotations

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When you finish one book, you don't want to just write the same book again.

JEFFREY EUGENIDES

Slate, October 10, 2011


What I had to face, the very bitter lesson that everyone who wants to write has got to learn, was that a thing may in itself be the finest piece of writing one has ever done, and yet have absolutely no place in the manuscript one hopes to publish.

THOMAS WOLFE

Selections from the Works of Thomas Wolfe

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I believe the first story I ever wrote was about a young girl who was terribly mistreated by her very cruel parents, and one day the girl fled to the woods to live amongst a pack of wolves. Hey, I was eleven, loved wolves, and had been grounded for what I felt was a minor infraction. Can you blame me?

VICTORIA LAURIE

Relate Magazine, April 1, 2011


There is as much variety of pluck in writing across a sheet, as in riding across a country.

WALTER BAGEHOT

Literary Studies

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There is probably no hell for authors in the next world--they suffer so much from critics and publishers in this.

CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE

Intuitions and Summaries of Thought


Rejections are painful, but inevitable. They're every writer's rite of passage.

OCTAVIA E. BUTLER

"Furor Scribendi", Bloodchild and Other Stories

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The first draft is the child's draft, where you let it all pour out and then let it romp all over the place, knowing that no one is going to see it and that you can shape it later.

ANNE LAMOTT

Bird by Bird

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All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY

A Moveable Feast

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A writer is a reader moved to emulation.

SAUL BELLOW

attributed, The Hidden Writer

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