quotations about writing
If you are to become a writer you'll have to stop fooling with words.
SHERWOOD ANDERSON
"The Teacher", Winesburg, Ohio
I write because I've always written, can't stop. I am a writing animal. The way a silk worm is a silk-producing animal.
DORIS LESSING
attributed, Shoptalk: Learning to Write with Writers
If you don't have the time to read, you don't have the time or the tools to write.
STEPHEN KING
On Writing
As the deadline looms, my quality of writing is in danger of declining all because I just had to check my email.
GERI SPIELER
"The Dangers of Distracted Writing", Huffington Post, February 28, 2016
There's no magic bullet for being a decent writer, or making people bond with your characters or fall in love with your story. Writing is a million different skills and challenges, and each story is different. But the more I struggle to make this work, the more I think there's one key thing that makes writing more excellent: Finding your own blind spots as an author, and trying to see into them.
CHARLIE JANE ANDERS
"The Single Most Important Thing You Can Do To Make Your Writing More Awesome", Gizmodo, February 25, 2016
Writing can't be a way of life -- the important part of writing is living. You have to live in such a way that your writing emerges from it.
DORIS LESSING
Doris Lessing: Conversations
Why write it? I thought it would earn me money.
ROBERT REED
interview, Fantasy & Science Fiction, December 18, 2012
You never know what you will learn till you start writing. Then you discover truths you never knew existed.
ANITA BROOKNER
attributed, Journal for You, 2003
Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.
CYRIL CONNOLLY
The New Statesman, February 25, 1933
I don't actually talk about my books much, because I find if I talk about them I don't want to write them anymore. I write to find out what happens. You know how you read a book? That's what I'm doing except I'm just doing it a lot slower because it takes a lot longer to do.
CHARLES DE LINT
"Music and Myth: A Conversation with Charles de Lint", The Internet Review of Science Fiction
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
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
I want to be the apostle of self destruction. I want my book to affect man's reason, his emotions, his nerves, his whole animal nature. I should like my book to make people turn pale with horror as they read it, to affect them like a drug, like a terrifying dream, to drive them mad, to make them curse and hate me but still to read me.
LEONID ANDREYEV
diary, August 1, 1891
The humorous story is told gravely; the teller does his best to conceal the fact that he even dimly suspects that there is anything funny about it.
MARK TWAIN
"How to Tell a Story"
Every character is an extension of the author's own personality.
EDWARD ALBEE
The New York Times, September 18, 1966
Rejection has value. It teaches us when our work or our skillset is not good enough and must be made better. This is a powerful revelation, like the burning UFO wheel seen by the prophet Ezekiel, or like the McRib sandwich shaped like the Virgin Mary seen by the prophet Steve Jenkins. Rejection refines us. Those who fall prey to its enervating soul-sucking tentacles are doomed. Those who persist past it are survivors. Best ask yourself the question: what kind of writer are you? The kind who survives? Or the kind who gets asphyxiated by the tentacles of woe?
CHUCK WENDIG
"25 Things Writers Should Know About Rejection", Terrible Minds
As a writer -- it must be the same for actors -- you're used to dealing with the idea of death and all the big questions. Unless you're writing purely for five-year-olds, about bunnies, you're going to have to think about death. Your characters will die and people will live on afterwards who cared about them. You need to be able to empathise with them. Of course, we all go through it; we all have people close to us die. But as a writer you really have to think it through properly, or it'll all ring false. It's almost one of the perks of the trade that you're forced to think about that stuff fairly deeply. So maybe when it comes along in real life, you're slightly better prepared to deal with it.
IAIN M. BANKS
"Iain Banks: The Final Interview", The Guardian, June 14, 2013
Writing is always a rough translation from wordlessness into words.
CHARLES SIMIC
attributed, Stealing Glimpses: Of Poetry, Poets, and Things in Between
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
The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof, shit detector. This is the writer's radar and all great writers have had it.
ERNEST HEMINGWAY
Paris Review, spring 1958