WRITING QUOTES XXVI

quotations about writing

Writing a killer first line to a novel is an art form in which there are a few masters and a great many apprentices.

CHUCK WENDIG

"25 Things to Know about Writing the First Chapter of Your Novel", Terrible Minds


You must keep sending work out; you must never let a manuscript do nothing but eat its head off in a drawer. You send that work out again and again, while you're working on another one. If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success -- but only if you persist.

ISAAC ASIMOV

attributed, How to Become a Famous Writer Before You're Dead

Tags: Isaac Asimov


Without a pen in my hand I can't think.

JOHN LE CARRÉ

interview, The Paris Review, summer 1997

Tags: John le Carré


Why do you keep reading a book? Usually to find out what happens. Why do you give up and stop reading it? There may be lots of reasons. But often the answer is you don't care what happens. So what makes the difference between caring and not caring? The author's cruelty. And the reader's sympathy ... it takes a mean author to write a good story.

GAIL CARSON LEVINE

Writing Magic

Tags: Gail Carson Levine


You have an idea in mind of what you want to achieve when you sit down to write something. It takes many years to accept that you will always fall short of that. Maybe now I can write the book that I might have had in mind five or twenty years ago. You're always lagging behind your best ideas.

TOBIAS WOLFF

The Missouri Review, 2003


After you have written a thing and you reread it, there is always the temptation to fix it up, to improve it, to remove its poison, blunt its sting.

JEAN COCTEAU

The Paris Review, summer-fall, 1964


I think a writer's job is to provoke questions. I like to think that if someone's read a book of mine, they've had--I don't know what--the literary equivalent of a shower. Something that would start them thinking in a slightly different way perhaps. That's what I think writers are for. This is what our function is.

DORIS LESSING

The Paris Review, spring 1988


What you're trying to do when you write is to crowd the reader out of his own space and occupy it with yours, in a good cause. You're trying to take over his sensibility and deliver an experience that moves from mere information.

ROBERT STONE

The Paris Review, winter 1985

Tags: Robert Stone


The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof, shit detector. This is the writer's radar and all great writers have had it.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY

Paris Review, spring 1958


In the end, the writer is not even allowed to live in his writing.

THEODOR W. ADORNO

Minima Moralia

Tags: Theodor W. Adorno


There is no way of writing well and also of writing easily.

ANTHONY TROLLOPE

Barchester Towers

Tags: Anthony Trollope


Few sensible authors are happy discussing the creative process -- it is, after all, black magic, and may lose its power if we look that particular gift horse too closely in the mouth.

EDWARD ALBEE

introduction, Three Tall Women

Tags: Edward Albee


I always have the feeling that I'm never going to be able to write anything funny again. That's why I keep writing funny things. I have to prove to myself that I'm wrong.

RITA RUDNER

interview, Huffington Post, March 18, 2013

Tags: Rita Rudner


Writing sets off a spark in my heart, and I'm going to start a fire.

TIFFANY FERENTINI

"Millennial Writers on Writing", Huffington Post, February 16, 2016


Everything you look at can be turned into a story ... you can make a tale of everything you touch.

HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN

"The Elder Tree Mother"

Tags: Hans Christian Andersen


Well, there are certain stock words that I have found myself using a great deal. When I become aware of them, it is an alarm signal meaning I am falling back on something that has served in the past--it is a sign of not thinking at the present moment, not that there is anything intrinsically bad about certain words or phrases.

JOHN ASHBERY

interview, The Paris Review, winter 1983

Tags: John Ashbery


What bothers most critics of my work is the goofiness. One reviewer said I need to make up my mind if want to be funny or serious. My response is that I will make up my mind when God does, because life is a commingling of the sacred and the profane, good and evil. To try and separate them is fallacy.

TOM ROBBINS

"In the Creative Process with Tom Robbins; Perfect Sentences, Imperfect Universe", New York Times, December 30, 1993


I didn't want to be ignored. I didn't want my books to be ignored. But I didn't really care to cut such a figure either because ... well, it interferes with the business of writing.

SAUL BELLOW

Q & A at Howard Community College, February 1986


I think writing for me has always been a matter of fear. Writing is fear and not writing is fear. I am afraid of writing and then I'm afraid of not writing.

FRAN LEBOWITZ

"In Conversation: Fran Lebowitz with Phong Bui", The Brooklyn Rail, March 4, 2014

Tags: Fran Lebowitz


Genre categories are irrelevant. I dislike them, but I do not have the casting vote. Writing is writing and stories are stories. Perhaps the only true genres are fiction and non-fiction. And even there, who can be sure?

TANITH LEE

Tabula Rasa, October 1994