WRITING QUOTES XIII

quotations about writing

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


I'm an into-the-mist writer in terms of plotting, and my process in general is very intuitive. Since my series characters are well established, what usually happens is they start talking in my head, and I'd better grab a pad and pen or hit the digital recorder feature on my iPhone or get to the keyboard before it goes away.

ELIZABETH ZELVIN

interview, Kings River Life Magazine, May 2012

Tags: Elizabeth Zelvin


In going where you have to go, and doing what you have to do, and seeing what you have to see, you dull and blunt the instrument you write with. But I would rather have it bent and dulled and know I had to put it on the grindstone again and hammer it into shape and put a whetstone to it, and know that I had something to write about, than to have it bright and shining and nothing to say, or smooth and well oiled in the closet, but unused.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY

preface, The First Forty-Nine Stories


It's very unlikely that a writer is going to make a living by writing. So then the question is: how do you balance work, life, and writing? If you find out, please tell me.

KELLY LINK

interview, Apex Magazine, July 2, 2013

Tags: Kelly Link


The first paragraph. The last paragraph. That's where the story is going and how it's going to end. Or else you'll go off in a hundred different directions.

HUNTER S. THOMPSON

The Paris Review, fall 2000


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


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

Tags: Rex Stout


There is probably no hell for authors in the next world--they suffer so much from critics and publishers in this.

CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE

Intuitions and Summaries of Thought


To say that a writer's hold on reality is tenuous is an understatement -- it's like saying the Titanic had a rough crossing. Writers build their own realities, move into them, and occasionally send letters home.

DAVID GERROLD

The Martian Child

Tags: David Gerrold


Usually, you don't know where a book comes from ... it's just there, some kind of an itch that you can't quite scratch.

CORMAC MCCARTHY

interview with Oprah Winfrey, June 1, 2008

Tags: Cormac McCarthy


Write only of what is important and eternal.

ANTON CHEKHOV

The Seagull


A major character has to come somehow out of the unconscious.

GRAHAM GREENE

New York Times, October 9, 1985


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

VICTORIA LAURIE

Twitter post, December 3, 2014

Tags: Victoria Laurie


For a fiction writer, a storyteller, the world is full of stories, and when a story is there, it's there, and you just reach up and pick it.

URSULA K. LE GUIN

The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination

Tags: Ursula K. Le Guin


I never had a plan, except to write. I love what I do, and have from the beginning. Loving what you do makes it a lot easier to work, every day, to face the tough spots and heel in for the long haul. Nothing against plans; they work for some people. But for me, if I'd been planning, worrying about numbers, trying to micro-manage my career, I wouldn't have focused on the writing. If you don't write, you're not read. If you're not read, you don't sell. So that's my Master Plan, I guess. Write the books, let the agent agent, the editor edit, the publisher publish.

NORA ROBERTS

interview, inReads, October 5, 2011


I really believe there are many excellent writers who have never written because they never could begin. This is especially the case of people of great sensitiveness, or of people of advanced education. Professors suffer most of all from this inhibition. Many of them carry their unwritten books to the grave. They overestimate the magnitude of the task, they overestimate the greatness of the final result. A child in a prep school will write the History of Greece and fetch it home finished after school. "He wrote a fine History of Greece the other day," says his fond father. Thirty years later the child, grown to be a professor, dreams of writing the History of Greece -- the whole of it from the first Ionic invasion of the Aegean to the downfall of Alexandria. But he dreams. He never starts. He can't. It's too big. Anybody who has lived around a college knows the pathos of those unwritten books.

STEPHEN LEACOCK

How to Write

Tags: Stephen Leacock


Just as the light and weightless vegetation of saltpeter floats over the old walls of houses as soon as the owner gets careless, so the literary vocation springs up in you.

FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA

letter to Jose Bello, summer 1925

Tags: Federico Garcia Lorca


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

Tags: Charles Simic


The creations of a great writer are little more than the moods and passions of his own heart, given surnames and Christian names, and sent to walk the earth.

WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

letter to the editor, Dublin Daily Express, February 27, 1895

Tags: William Butler Yeats


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