WRITING QUOTES XIII

quotations about writing

For me, everyone I write of is real. I have little true say in what they want, what they do or end up as (or in). Their acts appall, enchant, disgust or astound me. Their ends fill me with retributive glee, or break my heart. I can only take credit (if I can even take credit for that) in reporting the scenario. This is not a disclaimer. Just a fact.

TANITH LEE

interview, Innsmouth Free Press, November 17, 2009


A man always writes absolutely well whenever he writes in his own manner, but the wigmaker who tries to write like Gellert ... writes badly.

GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG

"Notebook B", The Waste Books

Tags: Georg Christoph Lichtenberg


A great writer has a high respect for values. His essential function is to raise life to the dignity of thought, and this he does by giving it a shape.

ANDRÉ MAUROIS

The Art of Writing

Tags: André Maurois


When you invent something, you're drawing on reservoirs of knowledge that you already have. It's only when you're faithful to the truth that something can come to you from the outside.

ELIF BATUMAN

interview, The Rumpus, April 25, 2012

Tags: Elif Batuman


We writers don't really think about whether what we write is good or not. It's too much to worry about. We just put the words down, trying to get them right, operating by some inner sense of pitch and proportion, and from time to time, we stick the stuff in an envelope and ship it to an editor.

GARRISON KEILLOR

"Who Has Time to Be a Writer?", Salon, August 11, 1998

Tags: Garrison Keillor


Usually, you don't know where a book comes from ... it's just there, some kind of an itch that you can't quite scratch.

CORMAC MCCARTHY

interview with Oprah Winfrey, June 1, 2008

Tags: Cormac McCarthy


The only characters I've made to resemble real people have been grotesques.

GLEN COOK

interview, SF Site, September 2005

Tags: Glen Cook


The first paragraph. The last paragraph. That's where the story is going and how it's going to end. Or else you'll go off in a hundred different directions.

HUNTER S. THOMPSON

The Paris Review, fall 2000


That's also part of having great editors -- they can sort of be honest with you and say, "I see where you're headed with this, but I don't think it's there yet. Dig deeper, babe, and come back with something more." And that's what you do, you dig waaaaaaaay down and you walk around the block eight million times and then you have it -- shazam! And it all comes together in something soooo much better than you thought you were capable of.

VICTORIA LAURIE

interview, Author's Den

Tags: Victoria Laurie


Should novels generally be 600 pages? No, they should not. Half of writing, maybe 3/4 of writing, is editing. This seems to be a thing that has not gotten through to them. It's my impression that you could get rid of half of most of these books. These people are not good enough to be this long, but they're apparently also not good enough to be shorter.

FRAN LEBOWITZ

interview, Ruminator Magazine, August/September 2005

Tags: Fran Lebowitz


Just as the light and weightless vegetation of saltpeter floats over the old walls of houses as soon as the owner gets careless, so the literary vocation springs up in you.

FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA

letter to Jose Bello, summer 1925

Tags: Federico Garcia Lorca


If, while observing the boundless universe, the writer is able to scrutinise his own self as well as others, the resulting incisiveness of his observations will far surpass objective descriptions of reality.

GAO XINGJIAN

"Literature as Testimony: The Search for Truth", Witness Literature: Proceedings of the Nobel Centennial Symposium

Tags: Gao Xingjian


I really believe there are many excellent writers who have never written because they never could begin. This is especially the case of people of great sensitiveness, or of people of advanced education. Professors suffer most of all from this inhibition. Many of them carry their unwritten books to the grave. They overestimate the magnitude of the task, they overestimate the greatness of the final result. A child in a prep school will write the History of Greece and fetch it home finished after school. "He wrote a fine History of Greece the other day," says his fond father. Thirty years later the child, grown to be a professor, dreams of writing the History of Greece -- the whole of it from the first Ionic invasion of the Aegean to the downfall of Alexandria. But he dreams. He never starts. He can't. It's too big. Anybody who has lived around a college knows the pathos of those unwritten books.

STEPHEN LEACOCK

How to Write

Tags: Stephen Leacock


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

Tags: Hunter S. Thompson


I have feelings, but my pen cannot and will not write feelings; nay, my heart has no mind that can coin them into words.

LYMAN ABBOTT

Reminiscences

Tags: Lyman Abbott


I believe one writes because one has to create a world in which one can live. I could not live in any of the worlds offered to me -- the world of my parents, the world of war, the world of politics. I had to create a world of my own, like a climate, a country, an atmosphere in which I could breathe, reign, and recreate myself when destroyed by living. That, I believe, is the reason for every work of art.

ANAÏS NIN

diary, February 1954

Tags: Anaïs Nin


Here are the two states in which you may exist: person who writes, or person who does not. If you write: you are a writer. If you do not write: you are not. Aspiring is a meaningless null state that romanticizes Not Writing. It's as ludicrous as saying, "I aspire to pick up that piece of paper that fell on the floor." Either pick it up or don't. I don’t want to hear about how your diaper's full. Take it off or stop talking about it.

CHUCK WENDIG

The Kick-Ass Writer


He did not seem to know enough about the people in his novel. They did not seem to trust him.

JAMES BALDWIN

Another Country

Tags: James Baldwin


Good writers define reality; bad ones merely restate it.

EDWARD ALBEE

Saturday Review, May 4, 1966


"Writing" is the Latin of our times. The modern language of the people is video and sound.

LAWRENCE LESSIG

Wikimania 2006

Tags: Lawrence Lessig