WRITING QUOTES XXIX

quotations about writing

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 heard writers talk about "discovering a voice," but for me that wasn't a problem. There were so many voices that I didn't know where to start.

SAM SHEPARD

The Paris Review

Tags: Sam Shepard


How one writes is a bit of a mystery to oneself. You just do it. My experience is that I sit down and write and I make it sound right to me, or sound good or interesting. And that's it.

ADAM PHILLIPS

"Poetry as Therapy", The Guardian, March 29, 2012

Tags: Adam Phillips


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


When I first started I was obsessed--putting in 16 hours a day, seven days a week, and loving it. My in-laws told my husband that perhaps he should get some help for me. Once the book was published it was OK because writers can be a little crazy.

JEAN M. AUEL

interview, goodreads, April 2011

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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

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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


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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The old, slow, creaking descriptions are a thing of the past; today the rule is brevity -- but every word must be supercharged, high-voltage.

YEVGENY ZAMYATIN

A Soviet Heretic

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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

Tags: Stephen King


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


Writing is a solitary pursuit and I think you have to be partially at peace with yourself, but it's the other part that's usually producing the stuff worth reading.

CRAIG JOHNSON

"A Conversation with Craig Johnson", The Cold Dish

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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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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


In the writing process, the more the story cooks, the better. The brain works for you even when you are at rest. I find dreams particularly useful. I myself think a great deal before I go to sleep and the details sometimes unfold in the dream.

DORIS LESSING

The New York Times, April 22, 1984


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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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

Tags: Fran Lebowitz


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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The first act of insight is throw away the labels. In fiction, while we do not necessarily write about ourselves, we write out of ourselves, using ourselves; what we learn from, what we are sensitive to, what we feel strongly about--these become our characters and go to make our plots. Characters in fiction are conceived from within, and they have, accordingly, their own interior life; they are individuals every time.

EUDORA WELTY

On Writing


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

Tags: James Baldwin