WRITING QUOTES VII

quotations about writing

There is as much variety of pluck in writing across a sheet, as in riding across a country.

WALTER BAGEHOT

Literary Studies

Tags: Walter Bagehot


There are two men inside the artist, the poet and the craftsman. One is born a poet. One becomes a craftsman.

EMILE ZOLA

letter to Cezanne

Tags: Emile Zola


Ideas are infinite--writers are hardwired to think that way. We keep it fresh by using new people, mixing character types and putting them in a different setting. It's always the first book all over again, but one idea can be told a thousand different ways. There are 88 keys on the piano, but you can make an infinite amount of music from those keys.

NORA ROBERTS

Time Magazine, November 29, 2007

Tags: Nora Roberts


I was always fascinated by the fact that you could take paper and ink and create worlds, images, characters. It seemed like magic.

CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON

"Q & A: Author Carlos Ruiz Zafon", Time, June 30, 2009

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The excitement I get from writing is finding out each day what happens next.

CHARLES DE LINT

"One Thing Leads to Another: An Interview with Charles de Lint", The Yalsa Hub, September 19, 2013

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Every word written is a net to catch the word that has escaped.

JEANETTE WINTERSON

The Stone Gods

Tags: Jeanette Winterson


But most important of all is the structure of the incidents. For Tragedy is an imitation, not of men, but of an action and of life, and life consists in action.

ARISTOTLE

Poetics

Tags: Aristotle


Too much is written by the men who can't write about the men who do write.

JACK LONDON

Martin Eden

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Prison always has been a good place for writers, killing, as it does, the twin demons of mobility and diversion.

DAN SIMMONS

Hyperion

Tags: Dan Simmons


It's easy, after all, not to be a writer. Most people aren't writers, and very little harm comes to them.

JULIAN BARNES

Flaubert's Parrot

Tags: Julian Barnes


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


When I am working on a book or a story I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you and it is cool or cold and you come to your work and warm as you write. You read what you have written and, as you always stop when you know what is going to happen next, you go on from there. You write until you come to a place where you still have your juice and know what will happen next and you stop and try to live through until the next day when you hit it again. You have started at six in the morning, say, and may go on until noon or be through before that. When you stop you are as empty, and at the same time never empty but filling, as when you have made love to someone you love. Nothing can hurt you, nothing can happen, nothing means anything until the next day when you do it again. It is the wait until the next day that is hard to get through.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY

The Paris Review, spring 1958


The art is never about what you write about. The art is about how you write about what you write about.

CHRIS ABANI

attributed, Stylistic Approaches to Nigerian Fiction

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When you finish one book, you don't want to just write the same book again.

JEFFREY EUGENIDES

Slate, October 10, 2011


I tend to write things seven times before I show them to my editor. I write them seven times, then I take them on tour, read them like a dozen times on tour, then go back to the room and rewrite, read and rewrite, and I try to learn as much as I can on my own before I show it to my editor at The New Yorker. I would never show him a first draft, because then he's really going to be sick of it by the twelfth draft.

DAVID SEDARIS

Oasis Magazine, June 2008


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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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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A story is a letter that the author writes to himself, to tell himself things that he would be unable to discover otherwise.

CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON

The Shadow of the Wind

Tags: Carlos Ruiz Zafon


When I'm writing, I am trying to find out who I am, who we are, what we're capable of, how we feel, how we lose and stand up, and go on from darkness into darkness.

MAYA ANGELOU

The Paris Review, fall 1990

Tags: Maya Angelou


When I'm writing I find it's the only time that I feel completely self-possessed, even when the writing itself is not going too well. It's fine therapy for people who are perpetually scared of nameless threats as I am most of the time.

WILLIAM STYRON

The Paris Review, spring 1954