quotations about writing
I cannot and do not live in the world of discretion, not as a writer, anyway. I would prefer to, I assure you -- it would make life easier. But discretion is, unfortunately, not for novelists.
PHILIP ROTH
Deception: A Novel
I didn't do anything as active as deciding that I wanted to be a writer. For one thing, I didn't feel like I was the final authority on whether or not I was anything like a writer. (I'm a timid soul.) I just kept writing stories, because becoming a veterinarian seemed as if it involved too much dissection.
KELLY LINK
"Words by Flashlight", Sybil's Garage, June 7, 2006
My approach to revision hasn't changed much over the years. I know there are writers who do it as they go along, but my method of attack has always been to plunge in and go as fast as I can, keeping the edge of my narrative blade as sharp as possible by constant use, and trying to outrun the novelist's most insidious enemy, which is doubt.
STEPHEN KING
foreword, The Gunslinger
The life of a writer is absolute hell ... if he is a writer of fiction he lives in a world of fear. Each new day demands new ideas and he can never be sure whether he is going to come up with them or not.
ROALD DAHL
Boy
The cat sat on the mat is not a story. The cat sat on the other cat's mat is a story.
JOHN LE CARRÉ
attributed, The Creative Compass: Writing Your Way from Inspiration to Publication
Without a pen in my hand I can't think.
JOHN LE CARRÉ
interview, The Paris Review, summer 1997
I write because I hate. A lot. Hard.
WILLIAM H. GASS
The Paris Review, summer 1977
The moment comes when a character does or says something you hadn't thought about. At that moment he's alive and you leave it to him.
GRAHAM GREENE
New York Times, October 9, 1985
I don't begin a novel with a shopping list--the novel becomes my shopping list as I write it. It's like that joke about the violin maker who was asked how he made a violin and answered that he started with a piece of wood and removed everything that wasn't a violin. That's what I do when I'm writing a novel, except somehow I'm simultaneously generating the wood as I'm carving it.
WILLIAM GIBSON
The Paris Review, summer 2011
That writer who aspires to immortality, should imitate the sculptor, if he would make the labours of the pen as durable as those of the chisel. Like the sculptor, he should arrive at ultimate perfection, not by what he adds, but by what he takes away.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Writing is a job, a talent, but it's also the place to go in your head. It is the imaginary friend you drink your tea with in the afternoon.
ANN PATCHETT
Truth and Beauty
I have no taste for either poverty or honest labor, so writing is the only recourse left for me.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON
The Proud Highway
As we understand it, the surest way to make a living by the pen is to raise pigs.
ROBERT ELLIOTT GONZALES
Poems and Paragraphs
Writers aren't people exactly. Or, if they're any good, they're a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person. It's like actors, who try so pathetically not to look in mirrors. Who lean backward trying--only to see their faces in the reflecting chandeliers.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
The Last Tycoon
There is, as yet, no Act of Parliament compelling a bona fide traveler to read. If you wish him to read, you must make reading pleasant. You must give him short views, and clear sentences.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
Writing is about growth, challenge and change. Without those things, there's no joy in it.
VERONICA ROTH
"Best-Selling Author Veronica Roth Tells What Writing Books Is Really Like", Entrepreneur, March 30, 2017
I write a sentence a thousand times, changing it all the time to look at it in different ways.
FRAN LEBOWITZ
The Paris Review, summer 1993
Dear Aspiring Author; Write with heart. Put that open, honest, bare soul on paper.
VICTORIA LAURIE
Twitter post, December 3, 2014
The writer is often faced with two choices--turn away from the reality of life's intimidating complexity or conquer its mystery by battling with it. The writer who chooses the former soon runs out of energy and produces elegantly tired fiction.
CHINUA ACHEBE
There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra
Sometimes I think that my best writing comes from exposing my fears and vulnerabilities and hoping that nobody notices it's about me.
VICTORIA LAURIE
Twitter post, October 13, 2014