WRITING QUOTES X

quotations about writing

So it is with all great writers: the beauty of their sentences is as unforeseeable as is that of a woman whom we have never seen; it is creative, because it is applied to an external object which they have thought of -- as opposed to thinking about themselves -- and to which they have not yet given expression.

MARCEL PROUST

Within a Budding Grove

Tags: Marcel Proust


Writers are a little below clowns and a little above trained seals.

JOHN STEINBECK

Quote Magazine, June 18, 1961

Tags: John Steinbeck


When anything important has to be written ... I think your hand concentrates for you.

REBECCA WEST

The Paris Review, spring 1981

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Novels are like paintings, specifically watercolors. Every stroke you put down you have to go with. Of course you can rewrite, but the original strokes are still there in the texture of the thing.

JOAN DIDION

The Paris Review, spring 2006


There are only two kinds of books which you can write and be pretty sure you're going to make a living -- cook books and detective stories.

REX STOUT

Royal Decree: Conversations with Rex Stout

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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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Young writers if they are to mature require a period of between three and seven years in which to live down their promise. Promise is like the mediaeval hangman who after settling the noose, pushed his victim off the platform and jumped on his back, his weight acting a drop while his jockeying arms prevented the unfortunate from loosening the rope. When he judged him dead he dropped to the ground.

CYRIL CONNOLLY

Enemies of Promise


The privilege of being a writer is that you have this opportunity to slow down and to consider things.

CHRIS ABANI

interview, UTNE Reader, June 2010

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Fine writing is generally the effect of spontaneous thoughts and a labored style.

WILLIAM SHENSTONE

Essays on Men and Manners


This is a slow business to have success in. There are exceptions, but for the most part it's kind of like the last writer standing.... I've got gray. I've got plenty of gray. I'm creating a career slowly, like a coral reef.

ROBERT REED

Lincoln Journal Star, January 11, 2004

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Read heavily in the area where you want to write. Be aware of what's selling and what's doing well but don't try to write to market trends; they are fleeting.

JEFF ABBOTT

interview, Book Browse


I like to write. Sometimes I'm afraid that I like it too much because when I get into work I don't want to leave it. As a result I'll go for days and days without leaving the house or wherever I happen to be. I'll go out long enough to get papers and pick up some food and that's it. It's strange, but instead of hating writing I love it too much.

HARPER LEE

interview with Roy Newquist, Counterpoints, 1964

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In my view, if you write every day you're a certified graphomaniac, you're OCD, you're addicted to the physical act and not the real, spiritual one.

ROSEMARY JENKINSON

"Writing is not about youth but about spark", Irish Times, March 27, 2017


Many writers are there that paint a stolen jade and sell it for a colt at the nearest fair.

AUSTIN O'MALLEY

Keystones of Thought

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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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Think what it would mean if you could teach, or if you could learn the art of writing. Why, every book, every newspaper you'd pick up, would tell the truth, or create beauty. But there is, it would appear, some obstacle in the way, some hindrance to the teaching of words. For though at this moment at least a hundred professors are lecturing on the literature of the past, at least a thousand critics are reviewing the literature of the present, and hundreds upon hundreds of young men and women are passing examinations in English literature with the utmost credit, still -- do we write better, do we read better than we read and wrote four hundred years ago when we were un-lectured, un-criticized, untaught?

VIRGINIA WOOLF

"Words Fail Me", BBC radio, April 29, 1937

Tags: Virginia Woolf


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 lot of novelists start late--Conrad, Pirandello, even Mark Twain. When you're young, chess is all right, and music and poetry. But novel-writing is something else. It has to be learned, but it can't be taught. This bunkum and stinkum of college creative writing courses! The academics don't know that the only thing you can do for someone who wants to write is to buy him a typewriter.

JAMES M. CAIN

The Paris Review, spring-summer 1978

Tags: James M. Cain


Things that you write are in some degree autobiographical, but the first thing you find out about autobiography is that it's the hardest thing in the world to write. It's hard because it's very difficult to be absolutely factual about yourself. So ... when you write, you may draw on facts from your own life, but if their not in harmony with your story, they're worse than useless. You just stumble over them.

SAUL BELLOW

Q & A at Howard Community College, February 1986


We all often feel like we are pulling teeth, even those writers whose prose ends up being the most natural and fluid. The right words and sentences just do not come pouring out like ticker tape most of the time.

ANNE LAMOTT

Bird by Bird

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