WRITING QUOTES VIII

quotations about writing

You are that most ambiguous of citizens, the writer.

SAMUEL R. DELANY

The Motion of Light in Water

Tags: Samuel R. Delany


Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose, or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation.

GRAHAM GREENE

Ways of Escape


Writing has freed me from the despair of living.

ANITA BROOKNER

The Paris Review, fall 1987

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Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay. I'm always irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It is a plunge into reality and it's very shocking to the system.

FLANNERY O'CONNOR

Mystery and Manners


Writers don't give prescriptions. They give headaches!

CHINUA ACHEBE

Anthills of the Savannah

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What separates the professionally successful ... from all the rest is their ability to stay steady, to have stamina. It is one thing to write a good sentence, another to write a good book.

KATY LEDERER

interview, Identity Theory, February 12, 2005

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The funny thing about writing is that whether you're doing it well or you're doing it poorly, it looks the exact same. That is actually one of the main ways that writing is different from ballet dancing.

JOHN GREEN

"July 19: A Day in the Life of a Writer (Who Has No Friends)", YouTube


Once writing has become your major vice and greatest pleasure only death can stop it.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY

The Paris Review, spring 1958


I've been to a lot of places and done a lot of things, but writing was always first. It's a kind of pain I can't do without.

ROBERT PENN WARREN

National Observer, March 12, 1977

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I'm grateful when stories come in a rush, although I keep an eye on them afterwards, to see whether they hold together. It's harder to judge the ones that took so long to finish. With those, I've lost perspective. Mostly I'm just glad that I can be done with them.

KELLY LINK

"Words by Flashlight", Sybil's Garage, June 7, 2006

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I wish my prose to be transparent--I don't want the reader to stumble over me; I want him to look through what I'm saying to what I'm describing. I don't want him ever to say, Oh, goodness, how nicely written this is. That would be a failure.

V. S. NAIPAUL

The Paris Review, fall 1998

Tags: V. S. Naipaul


I think a good writer is a mix of confidence (sure that what they're writing is going to appeal to their readers) and uncertainty (what if all these words are crap?). If you're too confident, you get an attitude that seeps through into your writing, affecting the characters and the story. If you're too uncertain, you'll never finish anything.

CHARLES DE LINT

interview with Kim Antieau, April 28, 2008

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Great novelists are philosopher-novelists who write in images instead of arguments.

ALBERT CAMUS

The Myth of Sisyphus


Every writer is an iron-monger that melts down old junk into new steel.

AUSTIN O'MALLEY

Keystones of Thought

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You don't start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it's good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it. That's why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence. It's just so easy to give up!

OCTAVIA E. BUTLER

Locus Magazine, June 2000


Writing is a part of healing, of digging into society.

KHALED KHALIFA

"Syrian novelist Khaled Khalifa tells the stories of a bleeding, beautiful country", Syria Direct, March 23, 2017


Write books only if you are going to say in them the things you would never dare confide to anyone.

EMIL CIORAN

The Trouble with Being Born

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To write as if your life depended on it; to write across the chalkboard, putting up there in public the words you have dredged; sieved up in dreams, from behind screen memories, out of silence--words you have dreaded and needed in order to know you exist.

ADRIENNE RICH

What Is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics

Tags: Adrienne Rich


Occasionally, there arises a writing situation where you see an alternative to what you are doing, a mad, wild gamble of a way for handling something, which may leave you looking stupid, ridiculous or brilliant -- you just don't know which. You can play it safe there, too, and proceed along the route you'd mapped out for yourself. Or you can trust your personal demon who delivered that crazy idea in the first place. Trust your demon.

ROGER ZELAZNY

introduction, "Passion Play"

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My father was a writer, so I grew up writing and reading and I was really encouraged by him. I had some sort of gift and when it came time to try to find a publisher I had a little bit of an "in" because I had his agent I could turn to, to at least read my initial offerings when I was about 20. But the only problem was that they were just awful, they were just terrible stories and my agent, who ended up being my agent, was very, very sweet about it, but it took about four years until I actually had something worth trying to sell.

ANNE LAMOTT

interview, Big Think, April 6, 2010