WRITING QUOTES XXXII

quotations about writing


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

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
As those move easiest who have learn'd to dance.

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

An Essay on Criticism


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

Tags: Alexander Pope


A day in which I don't write leaves a taste of ashes.

SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR

attributed, Writers on Writing

Tags: Simone de Beauvoir


There are two kinds of characters in all fiction, the born and the synthetic. If the writer has to ask himself questions -- is he tall, is he short? -- he had better quit.

REX STOUT

The New York Times, November 15, 1953


Belief in one's identity as a poet or writer prior to the acid test of publication is as naïve and harmless as the youthful belief in one's immortality ... and the inevitable disillusionment is just as painful.

DAN SIMMONS

Hyperion


What people who don't write don't understand is that they think you make up the line consciously -- but you don't. It proceeds from your unconscious. So it's the same surprise to you when it emerges as it is to the audience when the comic says it. I don't think of the joke and then say it. I say it and then realize what I've said. And I laugh at it, because I'm hearing it for the first time myself.

WOODY ALLEN

Esquire, September 2013

Tags: Woody Allen


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

Tags: Tanith Lee


What I do as a writer, I work with situations, characters, certain situations and characters that appeal to me. And then, I try to imagine them and write the story that seems to flow from them. At a certain point, I can realize the themes are merging from this. But I never start from a thematic point of view, that I'm going to write about reinvention of self, identity, or any of these things. Usually, after the book is finished and I start talking about it, that it becomes analytical in that way. And in some ways it's a distortion of what the process has been, writing the book.

JEFFREY EUGENIDES

interview, 3 AM Magazine


He was one of those poets who escaped the terrors of writing by writing all the time.

JAMES BALDWIN

Another Country

Tags: James Baldwin


You know, many writers really don't like to write. I think this the chief complaint of so many. They hate to write; they do it under the compulsion that makes any artist the victim he is, but they loathe the process of sitting down trying to turn thoughts into reasonable sentences.

HARPER LEE

interview with Roy Newquist, Counterpoints, 1964

Tags: Harper Lee


You can only learn to be a better writer by actually writing. I don't know much about creative writing programs. But they're not telling the truth if they don't teach, one, that writing is hard work and, two, that you have to give up a great deal of life, your personal life, to be a writer.

DORIS LESSING

The New York Times, April 22, 1984


Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of--but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.

ROBERT A. HEINLEIN

The Notebooks of Lazarus Long

Tags: Robert A. Heinlein


To me the question is always this: if a ray of light came out of the sky and said, "Your next book will never be published -- would you still write it?" If the answer is yes, the book is worth writing.

MARKUS ZUSAK

"Why I Write", The Guardian, March 28, 2008


My method is to take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say, and then to say it with the utmost levity.

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

Answers to Nine Questions

Tags: George Bernard Shaw


When you're telling a story, you've got to give details.

GAO XINGJIAN

Dialogue and Rebuttal


In the writing process, the more the story cooks, the better. The brain works for you even when you are at rest. I find dreams particularly useful. I myself think a great deal before I go to sleep and the details sometimes unfold in the dream.

DORIS LESSING

The New York Times, April 22, 1984


Writing in the first person can be claustrophobic--everything that happens in the book is notionally filtered through the narrator, and one can long for the fresh air of another perspective. One can luxuriate in the peculiar world of a character, but there are limitations. Ironizing that person's experience is difficult. You need perhaps a candid old friend of the narrator who can tell a few truths the narrator prefers to ignore.

ALAN HOLLINGHURST

The Paris Review, winter 2011

Tags: Alan Hollinghurst


Why write it? I thought it would earn me money.

ROBERT REED

interview, Fantasy & Science Fiction, December 18, 2012


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


Many writers-in-waiting spend a lot of time avoiding the work at hand. The most common way to avoid writing is by procrastination. This is the writer's greatest enemy. There is little to say about it except that once you decide to write every day, you must make yourself sit at the desk or table for the required period whether or not you are putting down words. Make yourself take the time even if the hours seem fruitless. Ideally, after a few days or weeks of being chained to the desk, you will submit to the story that must be told.

WALTER MOSLEY

This Year You Write Your Novel


I've discovered that rejections are not altogether a bad thing. They teach a writer to rely on his own judgment and to say in his heart of hearts, "To hell with you."

SAUL BELLOW

attributed, Putting Your Passion Into Print