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Writing Quotes
"The ear is the only true writer and the only true reader."
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"I never earned a dollar that was not somehow through writing."
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"A writer is, after all, only half his book. The other half is the reader and from the reader the writer learns."
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"It was more exciting to get that first book published, I think."
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"No special writing rituals. And my desk is usually cluttered."
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"Writing, the art of communicating thoughts to the mind through the eye, is the great invention of the world...enabling us to converse with the dead, the absent, and the unborn, at all distances of time and space."
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"Big game photography in Africa is mainly done from a vehicle, so then I feel I might as well take the lot."
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"To write a diary every day is like returning to one's own vomit."
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"I continued writing the bad plays which fortunately nobody would produce, just as no one did me the unkindness of publishing my early novels."
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"Continuity is one of the things I like about New England."
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"Because paper has more patience than people."
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"I am a writer. Imagining what someone would say or do comes to me as naturally as breathing."
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"A writer is like a stick of rock - the words go right through."
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"I learned that you should feel when writing, not like Lord Byron on a mountain top, but like child stringing beads in kindergarten, - happy, absorbed and quietly putting one bead on after another."
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"Certainly the plagiarism, and dealing with the fallout of it, was the most difficult thing I've ever faced since I started writing."
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"For correct writing, the cultivation of patience and mental accuracy is essential. Throughout the young author's period of apprenticeship, he must keep reliable dictionaries and textbooks at his elbow; eschewing as far as possible that hasty extemporaneous manner of writing which is the privilege of more advanced students."
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"It begins with a character, usually, and once he stands up on his feet and begins to move, all I can do is trot along behind him with a paper and pencil trying to keep up long enough to put down what he says and does."
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"When that book came out, it was like Columbus telling about America at the court of Ferdinand and Isabella."
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"The most ordinary word, when put into place, suddenly acquires brilliance. That is the brilliance with which your images must shine."
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"Writing a novel is actually searching for victims. As I write I keep looking for casualties. The stories uncover the casualties."
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"I know I was writing stories when I was five. I don't know what I did before that. Just loafed I suppose."
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"People talk about books that write themselves, and it's a lie. Books don't write themselves. It takes thought and research and backache and notes and more time and more work than you'd believe."
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"I am impelled, not to squeak like a grateful and apologetic mouse, but to roar like a lion out of pride in my profession."
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"Few writers are willing to admit writing is autobiographical."
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"Most people think that making a living from books is fun or joyful, but there's much more to it than what the eyes can see, and I wish I had more time for more profitable and also joyful activities."
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"At that moment, the urge to be writing was stronger than any notion she had of what she might write."
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"I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English, it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don't let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in. When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don't mean utterly, but kill most of them, then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are wide apart. An adjective habit, or a wordy, diffuse, flowery habit, once fastened upon a person, is as hard to get rid of as any other vice."
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"A book can never be anything more than the impress of its author's thoughts; and the value of these will lie either in the matter about which he has thought, or in the form which his thoughts take, in other words, what it is that he has thought about it."
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"All I really wanted to do was wildlife photography."
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"Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don't feel I should be doing something else."
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"I wrote my first novel because I wanted to read it."
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"The conditions of writing change absolutely between the first novel and the second: the first is an adventure, the second is a duty. The first is like a sprint which leaves you exhausted and triumphant beside the track. With the second the writer has been transformed into a long-distance runner - the finishing tape is out of sight, at the end of life. He must guard his energies and plan ahead. A long endurance is more exhausting than a sprint, and less heroic."
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"Mice: What is the best early training for a writer?Y.C.: An unhappy childhood."
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"I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead."
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"I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter."
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