quotations about writing
The more books we read, the clearer it becomes that the true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece and that no other task is of any consequence.
CYRIL CONNOLLY
The Selected Essays of Cyril Connolly
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
So basically, it's totally selfish why I write. There are more harmful ways to spend your time, is how I justify it I guess. If my stories can make others laugh, or make others feel unexpected and complicated emotions, well then it's more than feeling good, then it's a bonus, then its rewarding, then you're building community.
TYLER BARTON
"Millennial Writers on Writing", Huffington Post, February 16, 2016
Novels are like paintings, specifically watercolors. Every stroke you put down you have to go with. Of course you can rewrite, but the original strokes are still there in the texture of the thing.
JOAN DIDION
The Paris Review, spring 2006
It is hard to make a good documentary about writing. Writing is internal, it slowly takes shape in a mind, sometimes after the not very cinematic process of staring at a wall until the words come.
JULIA COOPER
"Obit doc examines the art of the obituary at The New York Times", The Globe and Mail, March 30, 2017
I'm not interested in writing for adults. I like them as people! I don't like the way they publish books in that world. Nothing ever gets a chance.
JOHN GREEN
Huffington Post, October 12, 2012
I wrote without much effort; for I was rich, and the rich are always respectable, whatever be their style of writing.
JANE AUSTEN
letter to Cassandra Austen, June 20, 1808
Grammar is a piano I play by ear, since I seem to have been out of school the year the rules were mentioned. All I know about grammar is its power.
JOAN DIDION
Joan Didion: Essays & Conversations
After a while the business end of writing takes too much of the writing time. Better to pay someone ten percent and find that you're still more than ten percent ahead in the end. Which is true. My present agent says that he always feels that a good agent during the course of a year should earn back for his client at least the ten percent he takes by way of commission, so the client's really nothing out. And what he should ideally do is make him more money than the ten percent.
ROGER ZELAZNY
interview, Phlogiston, 1995
Writers, like teeth, are divided into incisors and grinders.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Estimates of Some Englishmen and Scotchmen
Write books only if you are going to say in them the things you would never dare confide to anyone.
EMIL CIORAN
The Trouble with Being Born
We writers don't really think about whether what we write is good or not. It's too much to worry about. We just put the words down, trying to get them right, operating by some inner sense of pitch and proportion, and from time to time, we stick the stuff in an envelope and ship it to an editor.
GARRISON KEILLOR
"Who Has Time to Be a Writer?", Salon, August 11, 1998
Things that you write are in some degree autobiographical, but the first thing you find out about autobiography is that it's the hardest thing in the world to write. It's hard because it's very difficult to be absolutely factual about yourself. So ... when you write, you may draw on facts from your own life, but if their not in harmony with your story, they're worse than useless. You just stumble over them.
SAUL BELLOW
Q & A at Howard Community College, February 1986
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
The triumph of the written word is often attained when the writer achieves union and trust with the reader, who then becomes ready to be drawn deep into unfamiliar territory, walking in borrowed literary shoes so to speak, toward a deeper understanding of self or society, or of foreign peoples, cultures, and situations.
CHINUA ACHEBE
There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra
The privilege of being a writer is that you have this opportunity to slow down and to consider things.
CHRIS ABANI
interview, UTNE Reader, June 2010
Since we must and do write each our own way, we may during actual writing get more lasting instruction not from another's work, whatever its blessings, however better it is than ours, but from our own poor scratched-over pages. For these we can hold up to life. That is, we are born with a mind and heart to hold each page up to, and to ask: is it valid?
EUDORA WELTY
On Writing
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
I'm an into-the-mist writer in terms of plotting, and my process in general is very intuitive. Since my series characters are well established, what usually happens is they start talking in my head, and I'd better grab a pad and pen or hit the digital recorder feature on my iPhone or get to the keyboard before it goes away.
ELIZABETH ZELVIN
interview, Kings River Life Magazine, May 2012
Gotta have a head like a wrecking ball, a spirit like one of them punching clown dummies that always weeble-wobbles back up to standing. This takes time. Stories need to find the right home, the right audience. Stick with it. Quitting is for sad pandas.
CHUCK WENDIG
250 Things You Should Know About Writing