WRITING QUOTES VI

quotations about writing

You grow a whole lot more as a writer by getting old stories out of the house and letting new ones come in and live with you until they grow up and are ready to go. Don't let the old ones stay there and grow fat and cranky and eat all the food out of the refrigerator. You have dozens of generations of stories inside you, but the only way to make room for the new ones is to write the old ones and mail them off.

ORSON SCOTT CARD

How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy

Tags: Orson Scott Card


Every experience shapes your writing, being stuck in a car on a lonely bridge, or dancing at a prom, being the it girl on the beach, all of those things influence your life, they influence how you write, and the topics you choose to write about.

MAYA ANGELOU

Facebook post, October 13, 2012

Tags: Maya Angelou


There would be punishment and pain, and there would be happiness, too. That was writing.

MARKUS ZUSAK

The Book Thief

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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


My two fingers on a typewriter have never connected with my brain. My hand on a pen does. A fountain pen, of course. Ball-point pens are only good for filling out forms on a plane.

GRAHAM GREENE

International Herald Tribune, October 7, 1977


Writing is a concentrated form of thinking. I don't know what I think about certain subjects, even today, until I sit down and try to write about them.

DON DELILLO

Conversations with Don DeLillo


I'm glad that I didn't have the Internet when I started writing. I started writing when I was 20 and didn't show a word of it to anyone until I was 28. I had the sense to keep it to myself. Now the temptation with blogs and such, they're just getting it out there; maybe it would have been best to keep it to themselves.

DAVID SEDARIS

interview, Bohemian, June 2009


Young writers if they are to mature require a period of between three and seven years in which to live down their promise. Promise is like the mediaeval hangman who after settling the noose, pushed his victim off the platform and jumped on his back, his weight acting a drop while his jockeying arms prevented the unfortunate from loosening the rope. When he judged him dead he dropped to the ground.

CYRIL CONNOLLY

Enemies of Promise


The art is never about what you write about. The art is about how you write about what you write about.

CHRIS ABANI

attributed, Stylistic Approaches to Nigerian Fiction

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Novices in the art attain to finish of diction and precision of portraiture before they can construct the plot.

ARISTOTLE

Poetics

Tags: Aristotle


Each book starts from ashes.

PHILIP ROTH

interview with Cynthia Haven, "The Book Haven"

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When I'm writing, I am trying to find out who I am, who we are, what we're capable of, how we feel, how we lose and stand up, and go on from darkness into darkness.

MAYA ANGELOU

The Paris Review, fall 1990

Tags: Maya Angelou


I want to be a writer you can always depend on for a good read during your vacation, during your flight, during a time in your life when you want to forget the world around you. The nicest notes I've received from readers are those that tell me I've gotten them back into reading for entertainment. For me, there is no greater compliment.

JEFF ABBOTT

Publisher's Weekly, May 30, 2011


Every word written is a net to catch the word that has escaped.

JEANETTE WINTERSON

The Stone Gods

Tags: Jeanette Winterson


Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose, or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation.

GRAHAM GREENE

Ways of Escape


The art of writing is not, as many seem to imagine, the art of bringing fine phrases into rhythmical order, but the art of placing before the reader intelligible symbols of the thoughts and feelings in the writer's mind.

GEORGE HENRY LEWES

The Principles of Success in Literature

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To subvert is not the aim of literature, its value lies in discovering and revealing what is rarely known, little known, thought to be known but in fact not very well known of the truth of the human world. It would seem that truth is the unassailable and most basic quality of literature.

GAO XINGJIAN

Nobel Lecture, 2000

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Every writer in the country can write a beautiful sentence, or a hundred. What I am interested in is the ugly sentence that is also somehow beautiful.

DONALD BARTHELME

"On Paraguay"

Tags: Donald Barthelme


Writing is therapy. It's so relieving. I can be super overwhelmed with life and work or whatever is going on and I can take 10 or 15 minutes out of the day to put all of the thoughts I'm having out on paper. Not all the time the person I can talk to and not judge me. Writing and my journals are my best friend.

DELICIA RASHAD

"Local Poet Releases Latest Book on Life, Love and Tea", San Diego Voice and Viewpoint, March 30, 2017


WHEN YOU LEAVE YOUR TYPEWRITER YOU LEAVE YOUR MACHINE GUN AND THE RATS COME POURING THROUGH.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI

Notes of a Dirty Old Man

Tags: Charles Bukowski