WRITING QUOTES XIV

quotations about writing

He that writes to himself, writes to an eternal public.

ELIZA COOK

Diamond Dust

Tags: Eliza Cook


Think what it would mean if you could teach, or if you could learn the art of writing. Why, every book, every newspaper you'd pick up, would tell the truth, or create beauty. But there is, it would appear, some obstacle in the way, some hindrance to the teaching of words. For though at this moment at least a hundred professors are lecturing on the literature of the past, at least a thousand critics are reviewing the literature of the present, and hundreds upon hundreds of young men and women are passing examinations in English literature with the utmost credit, still -- do we write better, do we read better than we read and wrote four hundred years ago when we were un-lectured, un-criticized, untaught?

VIRGINIA WOOLF

"Words Fail Me", BBC radio, April 29, 1937

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That's also part of having great editors -- they can sort of be honest with you and say, "I see where you're headed with this, but I don't think it's there yet. Dig deeper, babe, and come back with something more." And that's what you do, you dig waaaaaaaay down and you walk around the block eight million times and then you have it -- shazam! And it all comes together in something soooo much better than you thought you were capable of.

VICTORIA LAURIE

interview, Author's Den

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He did not seem to know enough about the people in his novel. They did not seem to trust him.

JAMES BALDWIN

Another Country

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I wrote without much effort; for I was rich, and the rich are always respectable, whatever be their style of writing.

JANE AUSTEN

letter to Cassandra Austen, June 20, 1808

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Sometimes I think that my best writing comes from exposing my fears and vulnerabilities and hoping that nobody notices it's about me.

VICTORIA LAURIE

Twitter post, October 13, 2014

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Fiction writing is like duck hunting. You go to the right place at the right time with the right dog. You get into the water before dawn, wearing a little protective gear, then you stand behind some reeds and wait for the story to present itself. This is not to say you are passive. You choose the place and the day. You pick the gun and the dog. You have the desire to blow the duck apart for reasons that are entirely your own. But you have to be willing to accept not what you wanted to have happen, but what happens. You have to write the story you find in the circumstances you've created, because more often than not the ducks don't show up. The hunters in the next blind begin to argue, and you realize they're in love. You see a snake swimming in your direction. Your dog begins to shiver and whine, and you start to think about this gun that belonged to your father. By the time you get out of the marsh, you will have written a novel so devoid of ducks it will shock you.

ANN PATCHETT

What Now?

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I think it is essential to promote your work, since there are over 100,000 books published each year, and readers can fall in love with books they've never heard about.

DOUGLAS CARLTON ABRAMS

interview, The Writer's Life

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How hard is the destiny of a maker of books! He has to cut and sew up in order to make ideas follow logically. But when one writes a book on reverie, has the time not come to let the pen run, to let reverie speak, and better yet to dream the reverie at the same time one believes he is transcribing it?

GASTON BACHELARD

The Poetics of Reverie: Childhood, Language, and the Cosmos

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A writer should be able to express himself easily, naturally, copiously in a form that frees his mind, his energies. Why should he hobble himself with formalities?

SAUL BELLOW

The Paris Review, winter 1966


I think a writer's job is to provoke questions. I like to think that if someone's read a book of mine, they've had--I don't know what--the literary equivalent of a shower. Something that would start them thinking in a slightly different way perhaps. That's what I think writers are for. This is what our function is.

DORIS LESSING

The Paris Review, spring 1988


You know nobody's ever going to see the stuff, but you have to write through it. You're just trying to satisfy some grim, barren mandate. There's probably a German word for that.

JOHN JEREMIAH SULLIVAN

The Paris Review, winter 2012


Everybody writes a book too many.

MORDECAI RICHLER

"Sayings of the Week", The Observor, January 9, 1985

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My job is not to try to give readers what they want but to try to make readers want what I give.

CHINA MIÉVILLE

The Guardian, September 20, 2012


Hate the autocracy of the kept gates all you like, but the forge of rejection purifies us (provided it doesn't burn us down to a fluffy pile of cinder). The writer learns so much from rejection about himself, his work, the market, the business. Even authors who choose to self-publish should, from time to time, submit themselves to the scraping talons and biting beaks of the raptors of rejection. Writers who have never experienced rejection are no different than children who get awards for everything they do: they have already found themselves tap-dancing at the top of the "I'm-So-Special" mountain, never having to climb through snow and karate chop leopards to get there.

CHUCK WENDIG

"25 Things Writers Should Know About Rejection", Terrible Minds


I consider a story merely as a frame on which to stretch my materials.

WASHINGTON IRVING

introduction, Tales of a Traveler

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After a while the business end of writing takes too much of the writing time. Better to pay someone ten percent and find that you're still more than ten percent ahead in the end. Which is true. My present agent says that he always feels that a good agent during the course of a year should earn back for his client at least the ten percent he takes by way of commission, so the client's really nothing out. And what he should ideally do is make him more money than the ten percent.

ROGER ZELAZNY

interview, Phlogiston, 1995

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Since we must and do write each our own way, we may during actual writing get more lasting instruction not from another's work, whatever its blessings, however better it is than ours, but from our own poor scratched-over pages. For these we can hold up to life. That is, we are born with a mind and heart to hold each page up to, and to ask: is it valid?

EUDORA WELTY

On Writing


I never write in the daytime. It's like running through the shopping mall with your clothes off. Everybody can see you. At night ... that's when you pull the tricks ... magic.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI

Interview Magazine, September 1987

Tags: Charles Bukowski


For me, everyone I write of is real. I have little true say in what they want, what they do or end up as (or in). Their acts appall, enchant, disgust or astound me. Their ends fill me with retributive glee, or break my heart. I can only take credit (if I can even take credit for that) in reporting the scenario. This is not a disclaimer. Just a fact.

TANITH LEE

interview, Innsmouth Free Press, November 17, 2009