WRITING QUOTES XXIX

quotations about writing

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

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Publishing is a terrible invasion of my privacy. I like to write. I live to write. But I write just for myself and my own pleasure.

J. D. SALINGER

attributed, Salinger: A Biography


Keep your head down, avoid all the distractions of being a writer today--all the shifts in the business, all the drama, all the debating about where publishing is going--and write the best story that you can. It sounds a bit glib, but I think this is advice a lot of people are having trouble following right now. It is so hard to focus. But that is the single key to success.

JEFF ABBOTT

The Big Thrill, June 30, 2013

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I think writing for me has always been a matter of fear. Writing is fear and not writing is fear. I am afraid of writing and then I'm afraid of not writing.

FRAN LEBOWITZ

"In Conversation: Fran Lebowitz with Phong Bui", The Brooklyn Rail, March 4, 2014

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Go to any lengths to avoid preachiness! If you have to choose between the message and the story, always choose the story.

ELIZABETH ZELVIN

interview, The Fix

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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

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Getting out of bed of a morning has never been a problem, but I've noticed of late that my writing is better in the afternoon. The mornings are methodical, when all the blockwork and first-fix stuff takes place. The ornamentation or even de-ornamentation -- the things that separate writing from writing -- don't seem possible until later in the day, when I've established some perspective.

SIMON ARMITAGE

"Language is my enemy -- I spend my life battling with it", The Guardian, March 25, 2017


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

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I can't write five words but that I change seven.

DOROTHY PARKER

The Paris Review, summer 1956


I think it's bad to talk about one's present work, for it spoils something at the root of the creative act. It discharges the tension.

NORMAN MAILER

attributed, The Writer's Quotation Book


I've got splinters in my nose from the best publishing doors in town.

RITA MAE BROWN

interview, Time, March 18, 2008

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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


Show people your stuff, listen carefully to their responses, but ultimately don't value anyone's opinion above your own. Be influenced by writers you dislike as well as writers you like. Read their stuff to figure out what's wrong. Find a balance between the confidence that allows you continue, and the self-critical facility that enables you to improve. Get the balance wrong on either side, and you're screwed.

ALEX GARLAND

interview with Dennis Widmyer, July 30, 2007

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The true alchemists do not change lead into gold; they change the world into words.

WILLIAM H. GASS

A Temple of Texts

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When I sit down to write, I have a lot to write, but beforehand, I don't. I'm not full of ideas. Writing is the way I think.

ADAM PHILLIPS

Bomb Magazine, fall 2010


Writing is a tough thing and you only get better with practice. Just like free throws.

NICK WESTFALL

"Man writes directorial debut movie 'Finding Home'", myfox8, March 30, 2017


In utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable.

JOHN STEINBECK

New York Times, June 2, 1969


One writes out of one thing only--one's own experience. Everything depends on how relentlessly one forces from this experience the last drop, sweet or bitter, it can possibly give.

JAMES BALDWIN

Notes of a Native Son

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As a writer I want everybody to get a chance to voice their opinions. If each character thinks that they're telling the truth, then it's valid. Then at the end of the film, I leave it up to the audience to decide who did the right thing.

SPIKE LEE

"Fight the Power: Spike Lee on Do the Right Thing", Rolling Stone, June 20, 2014

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What you're trying to do when you write is to crowd the reader out of his own space and occupy it with yours, in a good cause. You're trying to take over his sensibility and deliver an experience that moves from mere information.

ROBERT STONE

The Paris Review, winter 1985

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