quotations about writing
I have not felt in a humor to entertain you if I had taken up my pen. Perhaps some unbecoming invective might have fallen from it.
ABIGAIL ADAMS
letter to John Adams, May 7, 1776
He did not seem to know enough about the people in his novel. They did not seem to trust him.
JAMES BALDWIN
Another Country
To me, writing is not a profession. You might as well call living a profession. Or having children. Anything you can't help doing.
VICKI BAUM
I Know What I'm Worth
If there is a special Hell for writers it would be in the forced contemplation of their own works.
JOHN DOS PASSOS
New York Times, October 25, 1959
A writer should be able to express himself easily, naturally, copiously in a form that frees his mind, his energies. Why should he hobble himself with formalities?
SAUL BELLOW
The Paris Review, winter 1966
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
Writing is -- at least for me -- movement forward, the conquest of a body that I do not know at all, away from something to something that I do not yet know; I never know what will happen -- and here 'happen' is not intended as plot resolution, in the sense of classical dramaturgy, but in the sense of a complicated and complex experiment that with given imaginary, spiritual, intellectual and sensual materials in interaction strives -- on paper to boot! -- towards incarnation.
HEINRICH BÖLL
Nobel Lecture, May 2, 1973
The writer operates at a peculiar crossroads where time and place and eternity somehow meet. His problem is to find that location.
FLANNERY O'CONNOR
Mystery and Manners
Everyone who has ever written will have discovered that writing always awakens something which, though it lay within us, we failed clearly to recognize before.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG
"Notebook J", The Waste Books
My gratitude for good writing is unbounded; I'm grateful for it the way I'm grateful for the ocean.
ANNE LAMOTT
Bird by Bird
I find writing extremely difficult. I usually have to drag myself to my desk, mainly because I doubt myself. And it's getting harder because I want to improve with every book. Sometimes I guess it's best just to forget there's an audience and just write like no one will ever read it at all.
MARKUS ZUSAK
"Why I Write", The Guardian, March 28, 2008
My job is not to try to give readers what they want but to try to make readers want what I give.
CHINA MIÉVILLE
The Guardian, September 20, 2012
My father was a writer, so I grew up writing and reading and I was really encouraged by him. I had some sort of gift and when it came time to try to find a publisher I had a little bit of an "in" because I had his agent I could turn to, to at least read my initial offerings when I was about 20. But the only problem was that they were just awful, they were just terrible stories and my agent, who ended up being my agent, was very, very sweet about it, but it took about four years until I actually had something worth trying to sell.
ANNE LAMOTT
interview, Big Think, April 6, 2010
I've come to believe that a huge part of getting better at writing is forcing yourself to see the things that have been in the corner of your eye all along. That means writing stories that include characters from other cultures and backgrounds--but also, being more open to other viewpoints in general. It also means interrogating all of your other lazy ideas and drilling into all of the "of courses" that you let yourself get away with.
CHARLIE JANE ANDERS
"The Single Most Important Thing You Can Do To Make Your Writing More Awesome", Gizmodo, February 25, 2016
In my view, if you write every day you're a certified graphomaniac, you're OCD, you're addicted to the physical act and not the real, spiritual one.
ROSEMARY JENKINSON
"Writing is not about youth but about spark", Irish Times, March 27, 2017
The text you write must prove to me that it desires me.
ROLAND BARTHES
The Pleasures of the Text
If it is a distinction to have written a good book, it is also a disgrace to have written a bad one.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Write only of what is important and eternal.
ANTON CHEKHOV
The Seagull
The final lesson a writer learns is that everything can nourish the writer. The dictionary, a new word, a voyage, an encounter, a talk on the street, a book, a phrase learned.
ANAÏS NIN
attributed, French Writers of the Past
In a very real way, one writes a story to find out what happens in it. Before it is written it sits in the mind like a piece of overheard gossip or a bit of intriguing tattle. The story process is like taking up such a piece of gossip, hunting down the people actually involved, questioning them, finding out what really occurred, and visiting pertinent locations. As with gossip, you can't be too surprised if important things turn up that were left out of the first-heard version entirely; or if points initially made much of turn out to have been distorted, or simply not to have happened at all.
SAMUEL R. DELANY
The Jewel-Hinged Jaw