WRITING QUOTES VII

quotations about writing

All stories must end so, with the next tale winking out of the corners of the last pages, promising more, promising moonlight and dancing and revels, if only you will come back when spring comes again.

CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE

The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making


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


I have not felt in a humor to entertain you if I had taken up my pen. Perhaps some unbecoming invective might have fallen from it.

ABIGAIL ADAMS

letter to John Adams, May 7, 1776

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Writing is therapy. It's so relieving. I can be super overwhelmed with life and work or whatever is going on and I can take 10 or 15 minutes out of the day to put all of the thoughts I'm having out on paper. Not all the time the person I can talk to and not judge me. Writing and my journals are my best friend.

DELICIA RASHAD

"Local Poet Releases Latest Book on Life, Love and Tea", San Diego Voice and Viewpoint, March 30, 2017


It is the glory and the merit of some men to write well, and of others not to write at all.

JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE

"Of Works of the Mind", Les Caractères

Tags: Jean de La Bruyère


To write as if your life depended on it; to write across the chalkboard, putting up there in public the words you have dredged; sieved up in dreams, from behind screen memories, out of silence--words you have dreaded and needed in order to know you exist.

ADRIENNE RICH

What Is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics

Tags: Adrienne Rich


You know nobody's ever going to see the stuff, but you have to write through it. You're just trying to satisfy some grim, barren mandate. There's probably a German word for that.

JOHN JEREMIAH SULLIVAN

The Paris Review, winter 2012


I consider a story merely as a frame on which to stretch my materials.

WASHINGTON IRVING

introduction, Tales of a Traveler

Tags: Washington Irving


Good fiction creates its own reality.

NORA ROBERTS

The Stanislaski Brothers


When I start to write, I don't have any plan at all. I just wait for the story to come. I don't choose what kind of story it is or what's going to happen. I just wait.

HARUKI MURAKAMI

Paris Review, summer 2004


The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.

ALBERT CAMUS

attributed, 2012: Waking of the Prophets

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Writing by hand, mouthing by mouth: in each case you get a very strong physical sense of the emergence of language--squeezed out like a well-formed stool--what satisfaction! what bliss!

WILLIAM H. GASS

The Paris Review, summer 1977


Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing.

NORMAN MAILER

The New York Times Book Review, September 17, 1965

Tags: Norman Mailer


Starting a new novel is a little like starting a new relationship -- you have to be prepared to commit for at least three years and put up with the domestic tedium as well as the emotional highs!

TOBSHA LEARNER

interview, Australian Women's Weekly, May 11, 2009

Tags: Tobsha Learner


Transitions are usually not that interesting. I use space breaks instead, and a lot of them. A space break makes a clean segue whereas some segues you try to write sound convenient, contrived. The white space sets off, underscores, the writing presented, and you have to be sure it deserves to be highlighted this way. If used honestly and not as a gimmick, these spaces can signify the way the mind really works, noting moments and assembling them in such a way that a kind of logic or pattern comes forward, until the accretion of moments forms a whole experience, observation, state of being. The connective tissue of a story is often the white space, which is not empty.

AMY HEMPEL

The Paris Review, summer 2003

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For a sentence is not complete unless each word, once its syllables have been pronounced, gives way to make room for the next.

ST. AUGUSTINE

Confessions

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I'm glad that I didn't have the Internet when I started writing. I started writing when I was 20 and didn't show a word of it to anyone until I was 28. I had the sense to keep it to myself. Now the temptation with blogs and such, they're just getting it out there; maybe it would have been best to keep it to themselves.

DAVID SEDARIS

interview, Bohemian, June 2009


There's no such thing as perfect writing, just like there's no such thing as perfect despair.

HURAKI MURAKAMI

Hear the Wind Sing

Tags: Haruki Murakami


In his prime the Hollywood screenwriter was one of the tragic figures of our age, evoking the special anguish that arises from feeling sorry for oneself while making large amounts of money.

J. G. BALLARD

A User's Guide to the Millennium

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Novices in the art attain to finish of diction and precision of portraiture before they can construct the plot.

ARISTOTLE

Poetics

Tags: Aristotle