WRITING QUOTES XIX

quotations about writing

I don't suppose a writing man ever really gets rid of his old crocus-yellow neckties. Sooner or later, I think, they show up in his prose, and there isn't a hell of a lot he can do about it.

J. D. SALINGER

"Seymour: An Introduction"

Tags: J. D. Salinger


I never write in the daytime. It's like running through the shopping mall with your clothes off. Everybody can see you. At night ... that's when you pull the tricks ... magic.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI

Interview Magazine, September 1987

Tags: Charles Bukowski


I really think that reading is just as important as writing when you're trying to be a writer. Because it's the only apprenticeship we have.

JOHN GREEN

"Nov. 26th: Writing Advice (And Notes on Surnameless Tiffany)", YouTube

Tags: John Green


I write because I hate. A lot. Hard.

WILLIAM H. GASS

The Paris Review, summer 1977

Tags: William H. Gass


I'm a pretty autobiographical writer. I like a high ratio of true events to made-up events or rearranged events. I've always felt that if you think you can find a way to tell the truth and keep the fictional flux going, it's at least a good idea to try, because very often the truth is more interesting than the posed picture, the tableau. The messiness of truth is a useful corrective.

NICHOLSON BAKER

The Paris Review, fall 2011

Tags: Nicholson Baker


I've increasingly been interested in leaving gaps and unresolved elements within a novel, trying to escape from the model of the novel as something in which there is a secret that, when revealed, will make all clear. It seems to me too unlike life, too convenient, too fictional.

ALAN HOLLINGHURST

The Paris Review, winter 2011


If a high quality of writing is to occur, it is reasonable to acknowledge that an open mind and a critical ear are essential tools that are used during all phases of revision.

GARRETT SAYERS

"Reading Aloud Is Essential to Quality Writing", Liberty Voice, January 31, 2016


If you stuff yourself full of poems, essays, plays, stories, novels, films, comic strips, magazines, music, you automatically explode every morning like Old Faithful. I have never had a dry spell in my life, mainly because I feed myself well, to the point of bursting. I wake early and hear my morning voices leaping around in my head like jumping beans. I get out of bed to trap them before they escape.

RAY BRADBURY

attributed, The Writer's Workout

Tags: Ray Bradbury


If you want to write ... You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads.

RAY BRADBURY

attributed, Words from the Wise

Tags: Ray Bradbury


Nothing is more clear than that every plot, worth the name, must be elaborated to its dénouement before any thing be attempted with the pen. It is only with the dénouement constantly in view that we can give a plot its indispensable air of consequence, or causation, by making the incidents, and especially the tone at all points, tend to the development of the intention.

EDGAR ALLAN POE

"The Philosophy of Composition"

Tags: Edgar Allan Poe


Often I think writing is a sheer paring away of oneself leaving always something thinner, barer, more meager.

F. SCOTT FITZGERALD

letter to "Scottie" Fitzgerald, April 27, 1940


So much of a novelist's writing, as I have said, takes place in the unconscious: in those depths the last word is written before the first word appears on the paper. We remember details of our story, we do not invent them.

GRAHAM GREENE

The End of the Affair


The cat sat on the mat is not a story. The cat sat on the other cat's mat is a story.

JOHN LE CARRÉ

attributed, The Creative Compass: Writing Your Way from Inspiration to Publication


The greater the length, the more beautiful will the piece be by reason of its size, provided that the whole be perspicuous.

ARISTOTLE

Poetics

Tags: Aristotle


The process of creating is related to the process of dreaming although when you are writing you're doing it and when you're dreaming, it's doing you.

ROBERT STONE

attributed, A Writer's Book of Days


This is our goal as writers, I think; to help others have this sense of--please forgive me--wonder, of seeing things anew, things that can catch us off guard, that break in on our small, bordered worlds.

ANNE LAMOTT

Bird by Bird

Tags: Anne Lamott


When I write, I go to live inside the book. By which I mean, mentally I can experience everything I'm writing about. I can see it, hear its sounds, feel its heat or rain. The characters become better known to me than the closest family or friends. This makes the writing-down part very simple most of the time. I only need to describe what's already there in front of me. That said, it won't be a surprise if I add that the imagined worlds quickly become entangled with the so-called reality of this one. Since I write almost every day, and I think (and dream) constantly about my work, it occurs to me I must spend more time in all these places than here.

TANITH LEE

author's note, Wolf Tower


When it's going well [writing] goes terribly fast. It isn't at all surprising to write a chapter in a day, which for me is about twenty-two pages. When it's going badly, it isn't really going badly; it's just the beginning.

JOHN LE CARRÉ

interview, The Paris Review, summer 1997


Writing is creative, which is right brain activity. Editing is rational, logical and process/rule driven, which is left-brain activity. It seems that, if you switch consistently between the two, the creative process becomes derailed by all the rules and forms. You scare it back into the shadows.

DAVID CHISLETT

"Editing Is Not Writing", Books LIVE, February 12, 2016


[Rejection] made me quit writing once. For six months. I started up again when my then seven-year-old son asked me to start writing again because I was too grumpy when I wasn't writing.

KIRBY LARSON

interview, Author Turf, March 6, 2014