quotations about writing
Beginning a book is unpleasant. I'm entirely uncertain about the character and the predicament, and a character in his predicament is what I have to begin with. Worse than not knowing your subject is not knowing how to treat it, because that's finally everything. I type out beginnings and they're awful, more of an unconscious parody of my previous book than the breakaway from it that I want. I need something driving down the center of a book, a magnet to draw everything to it--that's what I look for during the first months of writing something new. I often have to write a hundred pages or more before there's a paragraph that's alive. Okay, I say to myself, that's your beginning, start there; that's the first paragraph of the book.
PHILIP ROTH
Paris Review, fall 1984
As we understand it, the surest way to make a living by the pen is to raise pigs.
ROBERT ELLIOTT GONZALES
Poems and Paragraphs
A writer can be compared to a well. There are as many kinds of wells as there are writers. The important thing is to have good water in the well, and it is better to take a regular amount out than to pump the well dry and wait for it to refill.
ERNEST HEMINGWAY
The Paris Review, spring 1958
Writing is a solitary pursuit and I think you have to be partially at peace with yourself, but it's the other part that's usually producing the stuff worth reading.
CRAIG JOHNSON
"A Conversation with Craig Johnson", The Cold Dish
When I started out I just wanted to write books. I still do. It's the best job in the world for so many reasons. I wanted the thrill of seeing my books on the shelves in bookstores. I still do. The idea of someone reading my work, enjoying it was just amazing--and it still is. The bar rises, and that's a good thing. It pushes us to write smarter, write better, to dig deeper creatively. The bestseller lists, the awards, the sales or movies, they're all really delicious icing. But the work--the stories, the books--that's the cake. Too much icing without a really good, solid cake? It's going to make you fat, lazy and maybe a little bit sick. It's always about the cake first.
NORA ROBERTS
interview, inReads, October 5, 2011
When I first started I was obsessed--putting in 16 hours a day, seven days a week, and loving it. My in-laws told my husband that perhaps he should get some help for me. Once the book was published it was OK because writers can be a little crazy.
JEAN M. AUEL
interview, goodreads, April 2011
The most common human act that writing a novel resembles is lying. The working novelist lies daily, very complexly, and at great length.
WILLIAM GIBSON
Twitter post, May 31, 2009
In the mental disturbance and effort of writing, what sustains you is the certainty that on every page there is something left unsaid.
CESARE PAVESE
This Business of Living, May 4, 1942
I've got splinters in my nose from the best publishing doors in town.
RITA MAE BROWN
interview, Time, March 18, 2008
I have no pleasure in writing myself--none, in the mere act--though all pleasure in the sense of fulfilling a duty, whence, if I have done my real best, judge how heart-breaking a matter must it be to be pronounced a poor creature by critic this and acquaintance the other.
ROBERT BROWNING
letter to Elizabeth Barrett, March 12, 1845
I don't think I'm cut out for a job where you have to look professionally tidy. I prefer working in my pajamas and taking showers after lunch.
KELLY LINK
"Words by Flashlight", Sybil's Garage, June 7, 2006
I don't like to write from a flat, cold position. You must like what you're doing very much or like the people -- either like them or hate them. You can't be indifferent.
SAUL BELLOW
Q & A at Howard Community College, February 1986
I believe the most intricate plot won't matter much to readers if they don't care about the characters, especially in a series. So I try to focus hard on making each character, whether villain or hero, have an interesting flaw that readers can relate to.
JEFF ABBOTT
Publisher's Weekly, May 30, 2011
Writing sets off a spark in my heart, and I'm going to start a fire.
TIFFANY FERENTINI
"Millennial Writers on Writing", Huffington Post, February 16, 2016
To the question of writing at all we have sometimes been counselled to forget it, or rather the writing of books. What is required, we are told, is plays and films. Books are out of date! The book is dead, long live television! One question which is not even raised let alone considered is: Who will write the drama and film scripts when the generation that can read and write has been used up?
CHINUA ACHEBE
Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays
The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies.
RAY BRADBURY
Fahrenheit 451
Some writers, of course, simply write, as they feel they are driven to do, by outer/inner inspirations. If, after the work is written and, hopefully, published, others respond -- that is the Champagne. But we, or some of us, don't write for the Champagne. We write because we write.
TANITH LEE
interview, Intergalactic Medicine Show
Pay attention only to the form; emotion will come spontaneously to inhabit it. A perfect dwelling always finds an inhabitant. The artist's business is to build the dwelling; as for the inhabitant, it is up to the reader to provide him.
ANDRE GIDE
Pretexts: Reflections on Literature and Morality
If you don't have the time to read, you don't have the time or the tools to write.
STEPHEN KING
On Writing
I've always considered writing the most hateful kind of work. I suspect it's a bit like f***ing -- which is fun only for amateurs. Old whores don't do much giggling.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON
The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time