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Writing Quotes
"My job is unbearable to me because it conflicts with my only desire and my only calling, which is literature. Since I am nothing but literature and can and want to be nothing else, my job will never take possession of me, it may, however, shatter me completely, and this is by no means a remote possibility."
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"Panicky despair is an underrated element of writing."
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"I put a piece of paper under my pillow, and when I could not sleep I wrote in the dark."
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"The writer has no rights at all except those he forges for himself inside his own work. We have become so flooded with sorry fiction based on unearned liberties, or on the notion that fiction must represent the typical, that in the public mind the deeper kinds of realism are less and less understandable."
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"At the evident risk of seeming ridiculous, I want to begin by saying that I have tried for much of my life to write as if I was composing my sentences to be read posthumously. I hope this isn't too melodramatic or self-centred a way of saying that I attempt to write as if I did not care what reviewers said, what peers thought, or what prevailing opinions may be."
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"The point is, stories can be all lengths. Never underestimate the power of "less is more."
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"Writers owed their readers a duty of care, of mercy."
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"The profoundest thing writing teaches us is how much we contradict ourselves."
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"No one's book is perfect."
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"Basically, writers write because they have something to say...Everyone has a story in them, writers merely decide to share it with the world..."
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"I think this story-writing business is the foolishest yet," scoffed Marilla. "You'll get a pack of nonsense into your heads and waste time that should be put to your lessons. Reading stories is bad enough but writing them is worse."
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"When I look at a lot of older stuff that I've written, I think one sign of amateur humor writing is when you see people trying too hard."
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"Scotland consistently produces world-class writers."
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"When I am writing fiction, I believe I am much better organized, more methodical - one has to be when writing a novel. Writing poetry is a state of free float."
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"Writing is saying to no one and to everyone the things it is not possible to say to someone."
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"Why do you write strong female characters?Because you're still asking me that question."
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"I'm dazzled by your facility. In ten days you'll have written six stories! I don't understand it. I'm like one of those old aqueducts: there's so much rubbish cogging up the banks of my thought that it flows slowly, and only spills from the end of my pen drop by drop."
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"When I try to write in English, I feel like a bird without wings still trying to fly."
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"He looked up at her and smiled crookedly, holding out a few sheets of paper. "Will you read this? i think maybe it sucks. or maybe it's awesome. it's probably awesome. Tell me it's awesome,okay? Unless it sucks."
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"Payment and reserved copyright are at bottom the ruin of literature. Only he who writes entirely for the sake of what he has to say writes anything worth writing. It is as if there were a curse on money: every writer writes badly as soon as he starts writing for gain."
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"What makes a writer a prophet is his ability to speak truth..."
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"Writing sessions can last an hour or sixteen hours, depending on how it's going."
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"Edinburgh is a comfortable puddle for a novelist."
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"I sometimes think that writing is like driving a sheep down the road. If there's any gate open to the left or the right the reader will most certainly go into it."
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"Very few authors, especially the unpublished, can resist an invitation to read aloud."
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"One of the problems with being a writer is that all of your idiocies are still in print somewhere. I strongly support paper recycling."
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"Personal essay writing that incites the mind and instigates personal growth involves examination and re-examination, a process of noticing and reflecting upon what a person perceives. Essayistic writing is an osmotic process wherein a person intuitively absorbs information and ideas, allows inchoate thoughts to gestate in the unconscious mind, and then consciously places the emergent strands of language and logic into an orderly and expressive format."
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"I used to be afraid about what people might say or think after reading what I had written. I am not afraid anymore, because when I write, I am not trying to prove anything to anyone, I am just expressing myself and my opinions. It's ok if my opinions are different from those of the reader, each of us can have his own opinions. So writing is like talking, if you are afraid of writing, you may end up being afraid of talking."
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"Everyone assumes writers spend their time lounging around, writing and occasionally striking a pose whilst having a think."
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"When asked, 'How do you write?' I invariably answer, 'one word at a time.'"
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"If a story is in you, it has to come out."
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"The woods are full of regional writers, and it is the great horror of every serious Southern writer that he will become one of them."
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"Writing is magic happening on paper."
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"The writer can easily foresee his fate ... in an age when an author who wants to have readers must take care to write in such a way that the book can easily be perused during an afternoon nap ...."
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"The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself. I suppose that it begins or does not begin in the cradle."
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"It may take a village to raise a baby, but hell! it takes an army to produce a book."
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"The very first thing I tell my new students on the first day of a workshop is that good writing is about telling the truth. We are a species that needs and wants to understand who we are. Sheep lice do not seem to share this longing, which is one reason they write so very little. But we do. We have so much we want to say and figure out."
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"Writing is a calling, not a choice."
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"I believe that being able to communicate directly with readers is a boon. I certainly enjoy it as much as they do."
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"You are going to have to give and give and give, or there's no reason for you to be writing. You have to give from the deepest part of yourself, and you are going to have to go on giving, and the giving is going to have to be its own reward. There is no cosmic importance to your getting something published, but there is in learning to be a giver."
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