quotations about writing
"Writing" is the Latin of our times. The modern language of the people is video and sound.
LAWRENCE LESSIG
Wikimania 2006
Writing, in war and in peace, is the same thing. The only difference is how you view yourself.... Mass death, revolutions and history make you reconsider things.
KHALED KHALIFA
"Syrian novelist Khaled Khalifa tells the stories of a bleeding, beautiful country", Syria Direct, March 23, 2017
I have no taste for either poverty or honest labor, so writing is the only recourse left for me.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON
The Proud Highway
Yet do not miss the moral, my good men.
For Saint Paul says that all that's written well
Is written down some useful truth to tell.
Then take the wheat and let the chaff lie still.
GEOFFREY CHAUCER
The Canterbury Tales
Often I think writing is a sheer paring away of oneself leaving always something thinner, barer, more meager.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
letter to "Scottie" Fitzgerald, April 27, 1940
I think it is essential to promote your work, since there are over 100,000 books published each year, and readers can fall in love with books they've never heard about.
DOUGLAS CARLTON ABRAMS
interview, The Writer's Life
When I taught, a lot of my students weren't big readers, so they would write something and I realized that they thought it belonged in a book. Like, they didn't know what the inside of a book looked like, you know what I mean?
DAVID SEDARIS
Oasis Magazine, June 2008
To say that a writer's hold on reality is tenuous is an understatement -- it's like saying the Titanic had a rough crossing. Writers build their own realities, move into them, and occasionally send letters home.
DAVID GERROLD
The Martian Child
Almost every author I have met who has started a novel that is not yet finished is making the same mistake: They are all bogged down at around chapter 4 or 5. Why? Because they are editing everything as they go. Dotting every T, crossing every 'i' and writing and re-writing every sentence until it is perfect. There are a few theories as to why you just can't do this but let me just be clear up front: YOU CAN'T DO THIS!
DAVID CHISLETT
"Editing Is Not Writing", Books LIVE, February 12, 2016
Writing groups are the best things to happen to a writer since the invention of spell check. (I rely heavily on both so I would know.)
DASHA FAYVINOVA
"9 Reasons Joining A Writing Group Is One Of The Best Ways A Writer Can Grow", Bustle, February 8, 2016
When we attempt to articulate our tender feelings in writing, we enter an inner dialogue of self-exploration: we forage for the more precise word, the more resonant phrasing. If the writing is done with particular care and attention, there is a Goldilocks quality to it: We rustle through an assortment of terms, discarding one, perhaps as "too weak" or another "too ordinary" until we settle upon the one that is "just right". In doing so, we have discovered something about ourselves.
DANIEL GRIFFIN
"Don't Tell Him You Love Him... Put It in Writing", Huffington Post, February 15, 2016
The more books we read, the clearer it becomes that the true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece and that no other task is of any consequence.
CYRIL CONNOLLY
The Selected Essays of Cyril Connolly
If there's a character type I despise, it's the all-capable, all-knowing, physically perfect protagonist. My idea of hell would be to be trapped in a four-hundred page, first-person, first-tense, running monologue with a character like that. I think writers who produce characters along those lines should graduate from high school and move on.
CRAIG JOHNSON
"A Conversation with Craig Johnson", The Cold Dish
Hate the autocracy of the kept gates all you like, but the forge of rejection purifies us (provided it doesn't burn us down to a fluffy pile of cinder). The writer learns so much from rejection about himself, his work, the market, the business. Even authors who choose to self-publish should, from time to time, submit themselves to the scraping talons and biting beaks of the raptors of rejection. Writers who have never experienced rejection are no different than children who get awards for everything they do: they have already found themselves tap-dancing at the top of the "I'm-So-Special" mountain, never having to climb through snow and karate chop leopards to get there.
CHUCK WENDIG
"25 Things Writers Should Know About Rejection", Terrible Minds
You have to seduce the reader, manipulate their mind and heart, listen to the music of language. I sometimes think of prose as music, in terms of its rhythms and dynamics, the way you compress and expand the attention of a reader over a sentence, the way the tempo pushes you towards an image or sensation. We want an intense experience, so that we can forget ourselves when we enter the world of the book. When you are reading, the physical object of the book should disappear from your hands.
CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON
"The Shadow Maker", The Telegraph, November 27, 2005
The creations of a great writer are little more than the moods and passions of his own heart, given surnames and Christian names, and sent to walk the earth.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
letter to the editor, Dublin Daily Express, February 27, 1895
I invariably have the illusion that the whole play of a story, its start and middle and finish, occur in my mind simultaneously--that I'm seeing it in one flash. But in the working-out, the writing-out, infinite surprises happen. Thank God, because the surprise, the twist, the phrase that comes at the right moment out of nowhere, is the unexpected dividend, that joyful little push that keeps a writer going.
TRUMAN CAPOTE
The Paris Review, spring-summer 1957
I really think that reading is just as important as writing when you're trying to be a writer. Because it's the only apprenticeship we have.
JOHN GREEN
"Nov. 26th: Writing Advice (And Notes on Surnameless Tiffany)", YouTube
Fictional characters are made of words, not flesh; they do not have free will, they do not exercise volition. They are easily born, and as easily killed off.
JOHN BANVILLE
attributed, Irish Writers and Their Creative Process
I believe in writing somewhat quickly, getting the story down; it can be bad, it can be a mess, but the key thing is to get it down.
JEFF ABBOTT
"Rules of Fiction with Jeff Abbott", Suspense Magazine, January 19, 2017