WRITING QUOTES IX

quotations about writing

The novelist is like the conductor of an orchestra, his back to the audience, his face invisible, summoning the experience of music for the people he cannot see. The writer as conductor also gets to compose the music and play all of the instruments, a task less formidable than it seems. What it requires is the conscious practice of providing an extraordinary experience for the reader, who should be oblivious to the fact that he is seeing words on paper.

SOL STEIN

Stein on Writing


There are only two kinds of books which you can write and be pretty sure you're going to make a living -- cook books and detective stories.

REX STOUT

Royal Decree: Conversations with Rex Stout

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There are two men inside the artist, the poet and the craftsman. One is born a poet. One becomes a craftsman.

EMILE ZOLA

letter to Cezanne

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Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose, or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation.

GRAHAM GREENE

Ways of Escape


A story is a letter that the author writes to himself, to tell himself things that he would be unable to discover otherwise.

CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON

The Shadow of the Wind

Tags: Carlos Ruiz Zafon


Great novelists are philosopher-novelists who write in images instead of arguments.

ALBERT CAMUS

The Myth of Sisyphus


I like what I do. Some writers have said in print that they hated writing and it was just a chore and a burden. I certainly don't feel that way about it. Sometimes it's difficult. You know, you always have this image of the perfect thing which you can never achieve, but which you never stop trying to achieve. But I think ... that's your signpost and your guide. You'll never get there, but without it you won't get anywhere.

CORMAC MCCARTHY

interview with Oprah Winfrey, June 1, 2008


If there's a character type I despise, it's the all-capable, all-knowing, physically perfect protagonist. My idea of hell would be to be trapped in a four-hundred page, first-person, first-tense, running monologue with a character like that. I think writers who produce characters along those lines should graduate from high school and move on.

CRAIG JOHNSON

"A Conversation with Craig Johnson", The Cold Dish

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Rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, don't be precious about your first draft, it's an architectural blueprint to a whole building, be your own worst critic, confront your weakness and remember it's a craft.

TOBSHA LEARNER

interview, Booktopia, February 22, 2011

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When I start to write, I don't have any plan at all. I just wait for the story to come. I don't choose what kind of story it is or what's going to happen. I just wait.

HARUKI MURAKAMI

Paris Review, summer 2004


WHEN YOU LEAVE YOUR TYPEWRITER YOU LEAVE YOUR MACHINE GUN AND THE RATS COME POURING THROUGH.

CHARLES BUKOWSKI

Notes of a Dirty Old Man

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Writers in this country, particularly novelists, are likely to come to the medium through some back door. Nearly every writer I know was going to be something else, and then found himself writing by a kind of passionate default.

JOHN BARTH

The Paris Review, spring 1985

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You have to seduce the reader, manipulate their mind and heart, listen to the music of language. I sometimes think of prose as music, in terms of its rhythms and dynamics, the way you compress and expand the attention of a reader over a sentence, the way the tempo pushes you towards an image or sensation. We want an intense experience, so that we can forget ourselves when we enter the world of the book. When you are reading, the physical object of the book should disappear from your hands.

CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON

"The Shadow Maker", The Telegraph, November 27, 2005

Tags: Carlos Ruiz Zafon


All writing, all art, is an act of faith. If one tries to contribute to human understanding, how can that be called decadent? It's like saying a declaration of love is an act of decadence. Any work of art, provide it springs from a sincere motivation to further understanding between people, is an act of faith and therefore is an act of love.

TRUMAN CAPOTE

Truman Capote: Conversations

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I wish my prose to be transparent--I don't want the reader to stumble over me; I want him to look through what I'm saying to what I'm describing. I don't want him ever to say, Oh, goodness, how nicely written this is. That would be a failure.

V. S. NAIPAUL

The Paris Review, fall 1998

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Novelists have, on the average, about the same IQs as the cosmetic consultants at Bloomingdale's department store. Our power is patience. We have discovered that writing allows even a stupid person to seem halfway intelligent, if only that person will write the same thought over and over again, improving it just a little bit each time. It is a lot like inflating a blimp with a bicycle pump. Anybody can do it. All it takes is time.

KURT VONNEGUT

attributed, Quit Your Day Job!

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The funny thing about writing is that whether you're doing it well or you're doing it poorly, it looks the exact same. That is actually one of the main ways that writing is different from ballet dancing.

JOHN GREEN

"July 19: A Day in the Life of a Writer (Who Has No Friends)", YouTube


After all, the original way of writing books may turn out to be the best. The first author, it is plain, could not have taken anything from books, since there were no books for him to copy from; he looked at things for himself.

WALTER BAGEHOT

Literary Studies

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He who will not listen to any advice, nor be corrected in his writings, is a rank pedant.

JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE

"Of Works of the Mind", Les Caractères

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I'm all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let's start with typewriters.

DAVID GERROLD

A Matter For Men

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