quotations about writing
After all, the original way of writing books may turn out to be the best. The first author, it is plain, could not have taken anything from books, since there were no books for him to copy from; he looked at things for himself.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
The novelist is like the conductor of an orchestra, his back to the audience, his face invisible, summoning the experience of music for the people he cannot see. The writer as conductor also gets to compose the music and play all of the instruments, a task less formidable than it seems. What it requires is the conscious practice of providing an extraordinary experience for the reader, who should be oblivious to the fact that he is seeing words on paper.
SOL STEIN
Stein on Writing
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
introduction, "Passion Play"
The funny thing about writing is that whether you're doing it well or you're doing it poorly, it looks the exact same. That is actually one of the main ways that writing is different from ballet dancing.
JOHN GREEN
"July 19: A Day in the Life of a Writer (Who Has No Friends)", YouTube
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
Writers in this country, particularly novelists, are likely to come to the medium through some back door. Nearly every writer I know was going to be something else, and then found himself writing by a kind of passionate default.
JOHN BARTH
The Paris Review, spring 1985
When you finish one book, you don't want to just write the same book again.
JEFFREY EUGENIDES
Slate, October 10, 2011
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
Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose, or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation.
GRAHAM GREENE
Ways of Escape
No music. No rituals. At home I write in my office or on the laptop in the kitchen where our puppy likes to sleep, and I love his company. But I've trained myself to be able to work anywhere, and I write on trains, planes, in automobiles (if I'm not the driver), airports, hotel rooms. I travel often. If I couldn't write wherever I was I would get little done. I also can write in short bursts. Fifteen minutes are enough to move a story forward.
GAIL CARSON LEVINE
interview, Bookshop Talk, September 22, 2011
A story is a letter that the author writes to himself, to tell himself things that he would be unable to discover otherwise.
CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON
The Shadow of the Wind
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
But most important of all is the structure of the incidents. For Tragedy is an imitation, not of men, but of an action and of life, and life consists in action.
ARISTOTLE
Poetics
Great novelists are philosopher-novelists who write in images instead of arguments.
ALBERT CAMUS
The Myth of Sisyphus
I wish my prose to be transparent--I don't want the reader to stumble over me; I want him to look through what I'm saying to what I'm describing. I don't want him ever to say, Oh, goodness, how nicely written this is. That would be a failure.
V. S. NAIPAUL
The Paris Review, fall 1998
Rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, don't be precious about your first draft, it's an architectural blueprint to a whole building, be your own worst critic, confront your weakness and remember it's a craft.
TOBSHA LEARNER
interview, Booktopia, February 22, 2011
The writer's joy is the thought that can become emotion, the emotion that can wholly become a thought.
THOMAS MANN
Death in Venice
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
He who will not listen to any advice, nor be corrected in his writings, is a rank pedant.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Works of the Mind", Les Caractères
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