WRITING QUOTES VI

quotations about writing


Notice: Undefined variable: id in /hermes/walnacweb03/walnacweb03ak/b2149/pow.notablequote/htdocs/w/includes/quoter_subj.php on line 27

For a sentence is not complete unless each word, once its syllables have been pronounced, gives way to make room for the next.

ST. AUGUSTINE
Notice: Undefined variable: id in /hermes/walnacweb03/walnacweb03ak/b2149/pow.notablequote/htdocs/w/includes/quoter_subj.php on line 37

Confessions


Notice: Undefined variable: id in /hermes/walnacweb03/walnacweb03ak/b2149/pow.notablequote/htdocs/w/includes/quoter_subj.php on line 63

Tags: St. Augustine


The economy of a novelist is a little like that of a careful housewife who is unwilling to throw away anything that might perhaps serve its turn. Perhaps the comparison is closer to the Chinese cook who leaves hardly any part of a duck unserved.

GRAHAM GREENE

from journal kept while writing A Burnt-Out Case


Things may not be immediately discernible in what a man writes, and in this sometimes he is fortunate; but eventually they are quite clear and by these and the degree of alchemy that he possesses he will endure or be forgotten.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY

Nobel Prize speech, December 10, 1954

Tags: Ernest Hemingway


Well, when I was a young writer the people we read were Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Sartre, Camus, Celine, Malraux. And to begin with, I was a bit of a copycat writer and very derivative and tried to write a novel using their voices, really.... I keep it out of print.

MORDECAI RICHLER

interview, Brick 81, 1989


When a good writer is having fun, the audience is almost always having fun too.

STEPHEN KING

Entertainment Weekly, August 17, 2007

Tags: Stephen King


When I am working on a book or a story I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you and it is cool or cold and you come to your work and warm as you write. You read what you have written and, as you always stop when you know what is going to happen next, you go on from there. You write until you come to a place where you still have your juice and know what will happen next and you stop and try to live through until the next day when you hit it again. You have started at six in the morning, say, and may go on until noon or be through before that. When you stop you are as empty, and at the same time never empty but filling, as when you have made love to someone you love. Nothing can hurt you, nothing can happen, nothing means anything until the next day when you do it again. It is the wait until the next day that is hard to get through.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY

The Paris Review, spring 1958


When the first-rate author wants an exquisite heroine or a lovely morning, he finds that all the superlatives have been worn shoddy by his inferiors. It should be a rule that bad writers must start with plain heroines and ordinary mornings, and, if they are able, work up to something better.

F. SCOTT FITZGERALD

Notebooks


A story is a letter that the author writes to himself, to tell himself things that he would be unable to discover otherwise.

CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON

The Shadow of the Wind

Tags: Carlos Ruiz Zafon


Completing a book, it's a little like having a baby.... There's a feeling of relief and satisfaction when you get to the end. A feeling that you have brought your family, your characters, home. Then a sort of post-natal depression and then, very quickly, the horizon of a new book. The consolation that next time I will do it better.

JOHN LE CARRÉ

interview, The Telegraph, August 31, 2010


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

Tags: Gao Xingjian


To those who no longer have a homeland, writing becomes home.

THEODOR W. ADORNO

Minima Moralia

Tags: Theodor W. Adorno


You don't have to be a good person to be a good writer--history shows it's better if you're not--but you have to understand your badness.

PETER ABRAHAMS

End of Story

Tags: Peter Abrahams


You have to seduce the reader, manipulate their mind and heart, listen to the music of language. I sometimes think of prose as music, in terms of its rhythms and dynamics, the way you compress and expand the attention of a reader over a sentence, the way the tempo pushes you towards an image or sensation. We want an intense experience, so that we can forget ourselves when we enter the world of the book. When you are reading, the physical object of the book should disappear from your hands.

CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON

"The Shadow Maker", The Telegraph, November 27, 2005

Tags: Carlos Ruiz Zafon


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

JEANETTE WINTERSON

The Stone Gods

Tags: Jeanette Winterson


I'm grateful when stories come in a rush, although I keep an eye on them afterwards, to see whether they hold together. It's harder to judge the ones that took so long to finish. With those, I've lost perspective. Mostly I'm just glad that I can be done with them.

KELLY LINK

"Words by Flashlight", Sybil's Garage, June 7, 2006

Tags: Kelly Link


It is the glory and the merit of some men to write well, and of others not to write at all.

JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE

"Of Works of the Mind", Les Caractères

Tags: Jean de La Bruyère


There's no such thing as perfect writing, just like there's no such thing as perfect despair.

HURAKI MURAKAMI

Hear the Wind Sing

Tags: Haruki Murakami


To write as if your life depended on it; to write across the chalkboard, putting up there in public the words you have dredged; sieved up in dreams, from behind screen memories, out of silence--words you have dreaded and needed in order to know you exist.

ADRIENNE RICH

What Is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics

Tags: Adrienne Rich


Writers in this country, particularly novelists, are likely to come to the medium through some back door. Nearly every writer I know was going to be something else, and then found himself writing by a kind of passionate default.

JOHN BARTH

The Paris Review, spring 1985

Tags: John Barth


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