quotations about writing
I've heard writers talk about "discovering a voice," but for me that wasn't a problem. There were so many voices that I didn't know where to start.
SAM SHEPARD
The Paris Review
Wearing down seven number-two pencils is a good day's work.
ERNEST HEMINGWAY
The Paris Review, spring 1958
I can't write five words but that I change seven.
DOROTHY PARKER
The Paris Review, summer 1956
In the mental disturbance and effort of writing, what sustains you is the certainty that on every page there is something left unsaid.
CESARE PAVESE
This Business of Living, May 4, 1942
I want to be the apostle of self destruction. I want my book to affect man's reason, his emotions, his nerves, his whole animal nature. I should like my book to make people turn pale with horror as they read it, to affect them like a drug, like a terrifying dream, to drive them mad, to make them curse and hate me but still to read me.
LEONID ANDREYEV
diary, August 1, 1891
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"
I spend a lot of time loathing the sentences that I put down on the page. Once I'm past that phase, it doesn't really matter what the routine is (coffee shop, someone else's house, my dining room table), I'm pretty fast. I go back to the start of whatever I'm working on, every half hour or so, and revise my way back to where I left off. I have my headphones on, I'm checking email, I look at Twitter and Tumblr, and drink a lot of coffee. I need a lot of distraction to work.
KELLY LINK
interview, Electric Lit, February 6, 2015
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
The true alchemists do not change lead into gold; they change the world into words.
WILLIAM H. GASS
A Temple of Texts
You become a serious novelist by living long enough.
DON DELILLO
Conversations with Don DeLillo
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
In utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable.
JOHN STEINBECK
New York Times, June 2, 1969
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
In order to write the novel I'm committed to, I have to pretend that it's not only separate from everything I've written before, but also separate from anything anyone in the history of the universe has written. This is a grotesque delusion and a crass vanity, but also a creative necessity.
JULIAN BARNES
The Paris Review, winter 2000
You simply keep putting down one damn word after the other, as you hear them, as they come to you. You can either set brick as a laborer or as an artist.
ANNE LAMOTT
Bird by Bird
Writing is a tough thing and you only get better with practice. Just like free throws.
NICK WESTFALL
"Man writes directorial debut movie 'Finding Home'", myfox8, March 30, 2017
I'm writing a first draft and reminding myself that I'm simply shoveling sand into a box so that later I can build castles.
SHANNON HALE
attributed, The Novel-Writing Plan
Writing in the first person can be claustrophobic--everything that happens in the book is notionally filtered through the narrator, and one can long for the fresh air of another perspective. One can luxuriate in the peculiar world of a character, but there are limitations. Ironizing that person's experience is difficult. You need perhaps a candid old friend of the narrator who can tell a few truths the narrator prefers to ignore.
ALAN HOLLINGHURST
The Paris Review, winter 2011
If you are to become a writer you'll have to stop fooling with words.
SHERWOOD ANDERSON
"The Teacher", Winesburg, Ohio
He was one of those poets who escaped the terrors of writing by writing all the time.
JAMES BALDWIN
Another Country