WRITING QUOTES VII

quotations about writing

You grow a whole lot more as a writer by getting old stories out of the house and letting new ones come in and live with you until they grow up and are ready to go. Don't let the old ones stay there and grow fat and cranky and eat all the food out of the refrigerator. You have dozens of generations of stories inside you, but the only way to make room for the new ones is to write the old ones and mail them off.

ORSON SCOTT CARD

How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy

Tags: Orson Scott Card


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

WILLIAM SHENSTONE

Essays on Men and Manners


Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins committed in previous lives. The English reading public explains the reason why.

JAMES JOYCE

letter to Fanny Guillermet, September 5, 1918

Tags: James Joyce


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


I was always fascinated by the fact that you could take paper and ink and create worlds, images, characters. It seemed like magic.

CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON

"Q & A: Author Carlos Ruiz Zafon", Time, June 30, 2009

Tags: Carlos Ruiz Zafon


Clearly there is no moral obligation to write in any particular way. But there is a moral obligation, I think, not to ally oneself with power against the powerless. An artist, in my definition of the word, would not be someone who takes sides with the emperor against his powerless subjects.

CHINUA ACHEBE

There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra


The excitement I get from writing is finding out each day what happens next.

CHARLES DE LINT

"One Thing Leads to Another: An Interview with Charles de Lint", The Yalsa Hub, September 19, 2013

Tags: Charles de Lint


To those who no longer have a homeland, writing becomes home.

THEODOR W. ADORNO

Minima Moralia

Tags: Theodor W. Adorno


Prison always has been a good place for writers, killing, as it does, the twin demons of mobility and diversion.

DAN SIMMONS

Hyperion

Tags: Dan Simmons


Writers, like teeth, are divided into incisors and grinders.

WALTER BAGEHOT

Estimates of Some Englishmen and Scotchmen

Tags: Walter Bagehot


Writing is about growth, challenge and change. Without those things, there's no joy in it.

VERONICA ROTH

"Best-Selling Author Veronica Roth Tells What Writing Books Is Really Like", Entrepreneur, March 30, 2017


You don't have to be a good person to be a good writer--history shows it's better if you're not--but you have to understand your badness.

PETER ABRAHAMS

End of Story

Tags: Peter Abrahams


Writing is a concentrated form of thinking. I don't know what I think about certain subjects, even today, until I sit down and try to write about them.

DON DELILLO

Conversations with Don DeLillo


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

REBECCA WEST

The Paris Review, spring 1981

Tags: Rebecca West


When I'm writing, I am trying to find out who I am, who we are, what we're capable of, how we feel, how we lose and stand up, and go on from darkness into darkness.

MAYA ANGELOU

The Paris Review, fall 1990

Tags: Maya Angelou


You are that most ambiguous of citizens, the writer.

SAMUEL R. DELANY

The Motion of Light in Water

Tags: Samuel R. Delany


Irish English is a very different beast from English English or American English. Very different. The way in which Irish writers are only too happy to infuse their language with ambiguity is very different. An English writer will try to be clear. Orwell said that good prose should be like a pane of glass. The Irish writer would say: 'No no, it's a lens, it distorts everything.'

JOHN BANVILLE

"Oblique dreamer", The Guardian, September 17, 2000

Tags: John Banville


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

Tags: Rex Stout


I tend to write things seven times before I show them to my editor. I write them seven times, then I take them on tour, read them like a dozen times on tour, then go back to the room and rewrite, read and rewrite, and I try to learn as much as I can on my own before I show it to my editor at The New Yorker. I would never show him a first draft, because then he's really going to be sick of it by the twelfth draft.

DAVID SEDARIS

Oasis Magazine, June 2008


When the first-rate author wants an exquisite heroine or a lovely morning, he finds that all the superlatives have been worn shoddy by his inferiors. It should be a rule that bad writers must start with plain heroines and ordinary mornings, and, if they are able, work up to something better.

F. SCOTT FITZGERALD

Notebooks