quotations about writing
I didn't want to be ignored. I didn't want my books to be ignored. But I didn't really care to cut such a figure either because ... well, it interferes with the business of writing.
SAUL BELLOW
Q & A at Howard Community College, February 1986
I try to write every day. I used to try to write four times a day, minimum of three sentences each time. It doesn't sound like much but it's kinda like the hare and the tortoise. If you try that several times a day you're going to do more than three sentences, one of them is going to catch on. You're going to say "Oh boy!" and then you just write. You fill up the page and the next page. But you have a certain minimum so that at the end of the day, you can say "Hey I wrote four times today, three sentences, a dozen sentences. Each sentence is maybe twenty word long. That's 240 words which is a page of copy, so at least I didn't goof off completely today. I got a page for my efforts and tomorrow it might be easier because I've moved as far as I have."
ROGER ZELAZNY
interview, Phlogiston, 1995
As we understand it, the surest way to make a living by the pen is to raise pigs.
ROBERT ELLIOTT GONZALES
Poems and Paragraphs
I can't leave a chapter alone until I think it's as good as I can make it at that time. Often I will reach a stage, say, a third of the way into the book, where I realize there's something very wrong. Everything starts to feel shallow and false and unsatisfactory. At that stage I'll go back to the beginning. I might have written only fifty pages, but it's like a cantilever and the whole thing is getting very shaky because I haven't thought things through properly. So I'll start again and I'll write all the way through and then just keep going until it starts to get shaky again, and then I'll go back because I'll know that there's something really considerable, something deeply necessary waiting to be discovered or made. Often these are unbelievably big things. Sometimes they are things that readers will ultimately think the book is about.
PETER CAREY
The Paris Review, summer 2006
I would say that the writers I like and trust have at the base of their prose something called the English sentence. An awful lot of modern writing seems to me to be a depressed use of language. Once, I called it "vow-of-poverty prose." No, give me the king in his countinghouse. Give me Updike.
MARTIN AMIS
The Paris Review, spring 1998
Once somebody's aware of a plot, it's like a bone sticking out. If it breaks through the skin, it's very ugly.
LOUIS AUCHINCLOSS
The Paris Review, fall 1994
When it's going well [writing] goes terribly fast. It isn't at all surprising to write a chapter in a day, which for me is about twenty-two pages. When it's going badly, it isn't really going badly; it's just the beginning.
JOHN LE CARRÉ
interview, The Paris Review, summer 1997
Having your book turned into a movie is like seeing your oxen turned into bouillon cubes.
JOHN LE CARRÉ
attributed, Bad TV: The Very Best of the Very Worst
Fictional characters are made of words, not flesh; they do not have free will, they do not exercise volition. They are easily born, and as easily killed off.
JOHN BANVILLE
attributed, Irish Writers and Their Creative Process
Writing a novel is like working on foreign policy. There are problems to be solved. It's not all inspirational.
JAMES M. CAIN
The Paris Review, spring-summer 1978
Don't write too much. Concentrate your sweat on one story, rather than dissipate it over a dozen.
JACK LONDON
"Getting Into Print", Editor magazine, 1903
As things stand now, I am going to be a writer. I'm not sure that I'm going to be a good one or even a self-supporting one, but until the dark thumb of fate presses me to the dust and says "you are nothing," I will be a writer.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON
Gonzo
Nowadays three witty turns of phrase and a lie make a writer.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG
"Notebook D", Aphorisms
Writing, in whatever form, is your own personal progress report. There's nothing I love more than curling up with tea and reading back over my past, error-riddled posts. It's an indescribable connection that you simply can't get from a photo or memory alone. Think of it as the only true insight your future self has into you, as you are today. Blog for yourself and the rest will follow.
BIANCA BASS
"Why You Should Write (Even If It Feels Like Nobody Is Listening)", Huffington Post, February 29, 2016
All Writing Is Garbage. People who come out of nowhere to try to put into words any part of what goes on in their minds are pigs. The whole literary scene is a pigpen, especially today.
ANTONIN ARTAUD
Selected Writings
Dear Aspiring Author; Write with heart. Put that open, honest, bare soul on paper.
VICTORIA LAURIE
Twitter post, December 3, 2014
Whenever they tell me children want this sort of book and children need this sort of writing, I am going to smile politely and shut my earlids. I am a writer, not a caterer. There are plenty of caterers. But what children most want and need is what we and they don't know they want and don't think they need, and only writers can offer it to them.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
"A Message About Messages", CBC Magazine
My approach to revision hasn't changed much over the years. I know there are writers who do it as they go along, but my method of attack has always been to plunge in and go as fast as I can, keeping the edge of my narrative blade as sharp as possible by constant use, and trying to outrun the novelist's most insidious enemy, which is doubt.
STEPHEN KING
foreword, The Gunslinger
I like to have a hero a little underpowered. I mean, Spiderman is far cooler than Superman. How do you challenge Superman?
PATRICIA BRIGGS
interview, Bitten by Books, March 30, 2010
There's something paralyzing about being a writer that you have to escape.... The 26 letters distance us from our own hesitations and they make us sound as if we know what we're doing. We know grammar, we know prose, but actually we're all just struggling in the dark, really.
NICHOLSON BAKER
interview, Interview Magazine, September 16, 2013