WRITING QUOTES XVI

quotations about writing

I think without writing I would feel completely useless.

SAM SHEPARD

The Observer, March 20, 2010

Tags: Sam Shepard


A great writer has a high respect for values. His essential function is to raise life to the dignity of thought, and this he does by giving it a shape.

ANDRÉ MAUROIS

The Art of Writing

Tags: André Maurois


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


You keep working on your piece over and over, trying to get the sections and paragraphs and sentences and the whole just right, but there's a point at which you can tell you've begun hurting the work with your perfectionism. Then you have to release the work to new eyes.

ANNE LAMOTT

"Q&A: Anne Lamott", San Diego Magazine, January 27, 2014

Tags: Anne Lamott


Any writer, I suppose, feels that the world into which he was born is nothing less than a conspiracy against the cultivation of his talent--which attitude certainly has a great deal to support it. On the other hand, it is only because the world looks on his talent with such frightening indifference that the artist is compelled to make his talent important.

JAMES BALDWIN

Notes of a Native Son

Tags: James Baldwin


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

GRAHAM GREENE

New York Times, October 9, 1985


I want to do something splendid ... something heroic or wonderful that won't be forgotten after I'm dead ... I think I shall write books.

LOUISA MAY ALCOTT

Little Women

Tags: Louisa May Alcott


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


The chief advantage that ancient writers can boast over modern ones, seems owing to simplicity. Every noble truth and sentiment was expressed by the former in the natural manner; in word and phrase, simple, perspicuous, and incapable of improvement. What then remained for later writers but affectation, witticism, and conceit?

WILLIAM SHENSTONE

Essays on Men and Manners


Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college.

KURT VONNEGUT

A Man Without a Country


The writer is delegated to declare and to celebrate man's proven capacity for greatness of heart and spirit -- for gallantry in defeat -- for courage, compassion and love. In the endless war against weakness and despair, these are the bright rally-flags of hope and of emulation.

JOHN STEINBECK

Nobel Prize acceptance speech, December 10, 1962


Writing a novel is like working on foreign policy. There are problems to be solved. It's not all inspirational.

JAMES M. CAIN

The Paris Review, spring-summer 1978


Writers aren't people exactly. Or, if they're any good, they're a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person. It's like actors, who try so pathetically not to look in mirrors. Who lean backward trying--only to see their faces in the reflecting chandeliers.

F. SCOTT FITZGERALD

The Last Tycoon

Tags: F. Scott Fitzgerald


The trouble with writing fiction is that it has to make sense, whereas real life doesn't. It's incredibly annoying for us scribblers.

IAIN M. BANKS

"Iain Banks: The Final Interview", The Guardian, June 14, 2013

Tags: Iain M. Banks


Yet do not miss the moral, my good men.
For Saint Paul says that all that's written well
Is written down some useful truth to tell.
Then take the wheat and let the chaff lie still.

GEOFFREY CHAUCER

The Canterbury Tales

Tags: Geoffrey Chaucer


The man, the writer, the instrument of the creation will die, but his creation does not die.

LUIGI PIRANDELLO

Six Characters in Search of an Author

Tags: Luigi Pirandello


We writers don't really think about whether what we write is good or not. It's too much to worry about. We just put the words down, trying to get them right, operating by some inner sense of pitch and proportion, and from time to time, we stick the stuff in an envelope and ship it to an editor.

GARRISON KEILLOR

"Who Has Time to Be a Writer?", Salon, August 11, 1998

Tags: Garrison Keillor


The poet cannot invent new words every time, of course. He uses the words of the tribe. But the handling of the word, the accent, a new articulation, renew them.

EUGENE IONESCO

Present Past / Past Present

Tags: Eugene Ionesco


With 60 staring me in the face, I have developed inflammation of the sentence structure and a definite hardening of the paragraphs.

JAMES THURBER

New York Post, June 30, 1955

Tags: James Thurber


If you're writing about a character, if he's a powerful character, unless you give him vulnerability I don't think he'll be as interesting to the reader.

STAN LEE

interview, March 13, 2006

Tags: Stan Lee