WRITING QUOTES XIII

quotations about writing

This is a slow business to have success in. There are exceptions, but for the most part it's kind of like the last writer standing.... I've got gray. I've got plenty of gray. I'm creating a career slowly, like a coral reef.

ROBERT REED

Lincoln Journal Star, January 11, 2004

Tags: Robert Reed


My gratitude for good writing is unbounded; I'm grateful for it the way I'm grateful for the ocean.

ANNE LAMOTT

Bird by Bird

Tags: Anne Lamott


Everyone who has ever written will have discovered that writing always awakens something which, though it lay within us, we failed clearly to recognize before.

GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG

"Notebook J", The Waste Books


The only characters I've made to resemble real people have been grotesques.

GLEN COOK

interview, SF Site, September 2005

Tags: Glen Cook


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


I'm all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let's start with typewriters.

DAVID GERROLD

A Matter For Men

Tags: David Gerrold


One writes because one has been touched by the yearning for and the despair of ever touching the Other.

CHARLES SIMIC

The Unemployed Fortune-Teller

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Writing can wreck your body. You sit there on the chair hour after hour and sweat your guts out to get a few words.

NORMAN MAILER

The New York Times, October 4, 2000


There are only two kinds of books which you can write and be pretty sure you're going to make a living -- cook books and detective stories.

REX STOUT

Royal Decree: Conversations with Rex Stout

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I believe one writes because one has to create a world in which one can live. I could not live in any of the worlds offered to me -- the world of my parents, the world of war, the world of politics. I had to create a world of my own, like a climate, a country, an atmosphere in which I could breathe, reign, and recreate myself when destroyed by living. That, I believe, is the reason for every work of art.

ANAÏS NIN

diary, February 1954

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There are men that will make you books, and turn them loose into the world, with as much dispatch as they would do a dish of fritters.

MIGUEL DE CERVANTES

Don Quixote

Tags: Miguel de Cervantes


Whether 10 or 1,000 people are listening is irrelevant. Writing is an investment in your future and your potential.

BIANCA BASS

"Why You Should Write (Even If It Feels Like Nobody Is Listening)", Huffington Post, February 29, 2016


I find writing extremely difficult. I usually have to drag myself to my desk, mainly because I doubt myself. And it's getting harder because I want to improve with every book. Sometimes I guess it's best just to forget there's an audience and just write like no one will ever read it at all.

MARKUS ZUSAK

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


The writer must be universal in sympathy and an outcast by nature: only then can he see clearly.

JULIAN BARNES

Flaubert's Parrot

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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

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I, even now, persist in believing that these black marks on white paper bear the greatest significance, that if I keep writing I might be able to catch the rainbow of consciousness in a jar.

JEFFREY EUGENIDES

Middlesex

Tags: Jeffrey Eugenides


A plain narrative of any remarkable fact, emphatically related, has a more striking effect without the author's comment.

WILLIAM SHENSTONE

Essays on Men and Manners


If there is a special Hell for writers it would be in the forced contemplation of their own works.

JOHN DOS PASSOS

New York Times, October 25, 1959

Tags: John Dos Passos


The industry is a terrible, cold place run by people who love to tear writers apart. Rejection is the norm, which means writing is the act of falling madly, deeply in love with your characters and story, even knowing you'll probably get your heart broken for it.

COREY MANDELL

"Beware the Writing Zombies", Huffington Post, February 25, 2016


Dear Aspiring Author; Write with heart. Put that open, honest, bare soul on paper.

VICTORIA LAURIE

Twitter post, December 3, 2014

Tags: Victoria Laurie