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Writing Quotes
"It does not take long. Soon the fine galloping language, the gutless swooning full of sapless trees and dehydrated lusts begins to swim smooth and swift and peaceful. It is better than praying without having to bother to think aloud. It is like listening in a cathedral to a eunuch chanting in a language which he does not even need to not understand."
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"Unless a writer is extremely old when he dies, in which case he has probably become a neglected institution, his death must always be seen as untimely. This is because a real writer is always shifting and changing and searching. The world has many labels for him, of which the most treacherous is the label of 'Success."
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"E.L. Doctorow said once said that 'Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.' You don't have to see where you're going, you don't have to see your destination or everything you will pass along the way. You just have to see two or three feet ahead of you. This is right up there with the best advice on writing, or life, I have ever heard."
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"The pleasures of being a novelist are many. But the greatest by far is the manner in which I live through my characters; experiencing every detail of their story as it unfolds gradually and personally within my own creative psyche. I'm like a cat with untold lives, because each new book is my rebirth."
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"I write so others might contemplate things that are out of the ordinary. I write to make people feel-to cause laughter and tears and anger at injustice. I write so the world will imagine and wonder at crazy, incredible truths. I write to have a tiny bit of influence on a universal conscience."
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"For a novelist, the gaps in a story are as intriguing as material that still exists."
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"The act of writing is a contemplative vision quest, a somber expedition of discovery that requires the writer to subordinate their ego in order to travel in soulful solitude towards a desirable personal haven of rejuvenating enlightenment. Writing for personal growth entails unconditionally surrendering oneself to the struggle of tearing their sense of self apart. It demands the solemn willpower to dissect and analyze the fissures of a self-absorbent soul one layer at a time."
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"By applying their observational abilities along with full appliance of their logic and creative powers, writers attempt to create mental maps to share with other people regarding what they learned, think, and believe. The writer's vision can sway readers emotional state and in doing influence what they believe and how they behave."
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"Edinburgh is a comfortable puddle for a novelist."
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"Write out of love. Your piece will finish itself."
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"Write truthfully, write from the heart, and your words will live."
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"Every article and review and book that I have ever published has constituted an appeal to the person or persons to whom I should have talked before I dared to write it. I never launch any little essay without the hope-and the fear, because the encounter may also be embarrassing-that I shall draw a letter that begins, 'Dear Mr. Hitchens, it seems that you are unaware that It is in this sense that authorship is collaborative with 'the reader.' And there's no help for it: you only find out what you ought to have known by pretending to know at least some of it already.It doesn't matter how obscure or arcane or esoteric your place of publication may be: some sweet law ensures that the person who should be scrutinizing your work eventually does do so."
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"The worst thing for a writer is to know another writer, and worse than that, to know a number of other writers. Like flies on the same turd."
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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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"At the inauguration of each sentence, the writer commences with an optimistic sense of curiosity. Similar to an inquisitive explorer, a writer begins each thoughtful decree with an appreciative sense of the unknown and ends with a reverent regard for the unanswerable. Repeating this instigating act of discovery by placing a combination of sentences down on paper creates a unique verdict. The writer's compilation of pronouncements expresses their interpretation of life. Replicating this creative endeavor in the futile effort to say it all imitates the revolving mystery of life where physical reality and mysterious forces of nature operate upon humankind."
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"Writers aren't exactly people.... They're a whole bunch of people trying to be one person."
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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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"You are not responsible for the reader, you're only responsible for what you are writing."
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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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"A writer travels through the heart again and again to express the beauty of its contents."
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"A typical agent in New York gets 400 query letters a month. Of those, they might ask to read 3-4 manuscripts, and of those, they might ask to represent 1."
"Write at a pace that doesn't surpass your creative flow. Don't be hasty; don't be sloppy. Don't forfeit impressive writing for an impressive word count. Because eventually it will all have to be edited, and you'll find that it is harder to make bad writing good than to make good writing better."
"A writer's pen depreciates with every word that it writes. Whereas she appreciates with every word that she writes."
"Remember Stephen King's First Rule of Writers and Agents, learned by bitter personal experience: You don't need one until you're making enough for someone to steal ... and if you're making that much, you'll be able to take your pick of good agents."
"Writers owed their readers a duty of care, of mercy."
"There are more writers who read than readers who write."
"A writer tries to express those thoughts, which are inexpressible, with beauty and love."
"Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards."
"When I try to write in English, I feel like a bird without wings still trying to fly."
"My writings are reflections of my momentary thoughts, imaginations, and love for you and life in this world as a whole."
"What makes a writer a prophet is his ability to speak truth..."
"A writer's primary goal is to make sense. The bookstore's is to make cents."
"There are days when writing is within my power and a story unfolds along a course I've already chosen. And then there are days when the words breathe on their own and take me by the hand, leading me along unfathomed paths. Either way, the end result is this author's fairytale."
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