WRITING QUOTES XII

quotations about writing


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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
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introduction, "Passion Play"


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Tags: Roger Zelazny


I have feelings, but my pen cannot and will not write feelings; nay, my heart has no mind that can coin them into words.

LYMAN ABBOTT

Reminiscences

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I can't avoid writing. It's a sort of nervous tic I have developed since I gave up needlepoint.

CLARE BOOTHE LUCE

"Fast and Luce", Vanity Fair, March 1988

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A writer should be able to express himself easily, naturally, copiously in a form that frees his mind, his energies. Why should he hobble himself with formalities?

SAUL BELLOW

The Paris Review, winter 1966


Writers are made--forged, really, in a kiln of their own madness and insecurities.

CHUCK WENDIG

250 Things You Should Know About Writing

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Write as the wind blows and command all words like an army!

HILAIRE BELLOC

The Path to Rome

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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


When I write, I write because a thing has to be done. I don't think a writer should meddle too much with his own work. He should let the work write itself.

JORGE LUIS BORGES

The Paris Review, winter-spring 1967


The writer is often faced with two choices--turn away from the reality of life's intimidating complexity or conquer its mystery by battling with it. The writer who chooses the former soon runs out of energy and produces elegantly tired fiction.

CHINUA ACHEBE

There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra


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


The factors controlling a writer's popularity are as mysterious and ultimately as unknowable as the number of stars in the sky.

SAMUEL R. DELANY

interview, SF Site, April 2001

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The easier a thing is to write then the more the writer gets paid for writing it. (And vice versa: ask the poets at the bus stop.)

MARTIN AMIS

The Information


One writes because one has been touched by the yearning for and the despair of ever touching the Other.

CHARLES SIMIC

The Unemployed Fortune-Teller

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My gratitude for good writing is unbounded; I'm grateful for it the way I'm grateful for the ocean.

ANNE LAMOTT

Bird by Bird

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Journalism is a good place for any writer to start -- the retailing of fact is always a useful trade and can it help you learn to appreciate the declarative sentence. A young writer is easily tempted by the allusive and ethereal and ironic and reflective, but the declarative is at the bottom of most good writing.

GARRISON KEILLOR

"Post to the Host", July 2005


If, while observing the boundless universe, the writer is able to scrutinise his own self as well as others, the resulting incisiveness of his observations will far surpass objective descriptions of reality.

GAO XINGJIAN

"Literature as Testimony: The Search for Truth", Witness Literature: Proceedings of the Nobel Centennial Symposium

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If there is a special Hell for writers it would be in the forced contemplation of their own works.

JOHN DOS PASSOS

New York Times, October 25, 1959

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I'm not interested in writing for adults. I like them as people! I don't like the way they publish books in that world. Nothing ever gets a chance.

JOHN GREEN

Huffington Post, October 12, 2012


I find writing extremely difficult. I usually have to drag myself to my desk, mainly because I doubt myself. And it's getting harder because I want to improve with every book. Sometimes I guess it's best just to forget there's an audience and just write like no one will ever read it at all.

MARKUS ZUSAK

"Why I Write", The Guardian, March 28, 2008


He did not seem to know enough about the people in his novel. They did not seem to trust him.

JAMES BALDWIN

Another Country

Tags: James Baldwin