WRITING QUOTES XXX

quotations about writing

If you are to become a writer you'll have to stop fooling with words.

SHERWOOD ANDERSON

"The Teacher", Winesburg, Ohio

Tags: Sherwood Anderson


If you don't have the time to read, you don't have the time or the tools to write.

STEPHEN KING

On Writing

Tags: Stephen King


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

Tags: Jeff Abbott


Occasionally, I'll dream I'm in the factory. That will help me write. Not creatively, but more like a prod. I don't want to go back there.

ROBERT REED

Lincoln Journal Star, January 11, 2004


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


Most writers -- poets in especial -- prefer having it understood that they compose by a species of fine frenzy -- an ecstatic intuition -- and would positively shudder at letting the public take a peep behind the scenes, at the elaborate and vacillating crudities of thought -- at the true purposes seized only at the last moment -- at the innumerable glimpses of idea that arrived not at the maturity of full view -- at the fully matured fancies discarded in despair as unmanageable -- at the cautious selections and rejections -- at the painful erasures and interpolations -- in a word, at the wheels and pinions -- the tackle for scene-shifting -- the step-ladders and demon-traps -- the cock's feathers, the red paint and the black patches, which, in ninety-nine cases out of the hundred, constitute the properties of the literary histrio.

EDGAR ALLAN POE

"The Philosophy of Composition"


First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you're inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won't. Habit is persistence in practice.

OCTAVIA E. BUTLER

"Furor Scribendi", Bloodchild and Other Stories


The same common-sense which makes an author write good things, makes him dread they are not good enough to deserve reading.

JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE

"Of Works of the Mind", Les Caractères

Tags: Jean de La Bruyère


A day in which I don't write leaves a taste of ashes.

SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR

attributed, Writers on Writing

Tags: Simone de Beauvoir


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

Tags: Charles de Lint


Even though language has its richness the relationship between language and the writer is always like a stone and you have to make the stone human.

CARMEN BOULLOSA

Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, Vol. 4, No. 2, 1995

Tags: Carmen Boullosa


A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.

THOMAS MANN

Essays of Three Decades


A writer never forgets the first time he accepted a few coins or a word of praise in exchange for a story. He will never forget the sweet poison of vanity in his blood and the belief that, if he succeeds in not letting anyone discover his lack of talent, the dream of literature will provide him with a roof over his head, a hot meal at the end of the day, and what he covets the most: his name printed on a miserable piece of paper that surely will outlive him. A writer is condemned to remember that moment, because from then on he is doomed and his soul has a price.

CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON

The Angel's Game

Tags: Carlos Ruiz Zafon


Fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners. Often the attachment is scarcely perceptible; Shakespeare's plays, for instance, seem to hang there complete by themselves. But when the web is pulled askew, hooked up at the edge, torn in the middle, one remembers that these webs are not spun in midair by incorporeal creatures, but are the work of suffering human beings, and are attached to the grossly material things, like health and money and the houses we live in.

VIRGINIA WOOLF

A Room of One's Own

Tags: Virginia Woolf


When I write, I don't know what is going to emerge. I begin in a condition of complete unknowing, an utter nakedness of concept or goal. A word appears, another word appears, an image. It is a moving into mystery.

JANE HIRSHFIELD

The Atlantic Online, September 18, 1997

Tags: Jane Hirshfield


The artist deals with what cannot be said in words. The artist whose medium is fiction does this in words. The novelist says in words what cannot be said in words.

URSULA K. LE GUIN

introduction, The Left Hand of Darkness

Tags: Ursula K. Le Guin


At the age of fourteen I discovered writing as an escape from a world of reality in which I felt acutely uncomfortable.

TENNESSEE WILLIAMS

foreword, Sweet Bird of Youth

Tags: Tennessee Williams


He was one of those poets who escaped the terrors of writing by writing all the time.

JAMES BALDWIN

Another Country

Tags: James Baldwin


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


Get an agent. Seriously, submitting stuff unagented means it will end up on the slush pile. An agent is the first quality filter, and a good agent is worth his or her weight in gold, as they'll often know the editors on a personal level and will be able to talk to them directly about the project.

TIM LEBBON

interview, The Horror Zine

Tags: Tim Lebbon