quotations about writing
The art of the word is painting + architecture + music.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
The New Russian Prose
All stories are about wolves. All worth repeating, that is. Anything else is sentimental drivel.
MARGARET ATWOOD
The Blind Assassin
I like to have a hero a little underpowered. I mean, Spiderman is far cooler than Superman. How do you challenge Superman?
PATRICIA BRIGGS
interview, Bitten by Books, March 30, 2010
The man, the writer, the instrument of the creation will die, but his creation does not die.
LUIGI PIRANDELLO
Six Characters in Search of an Author
A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul, and that, I am sure, is why he does it.
ROALD DAHL
Boy
Getting out of bed of a morning has never been a problem, but I've noticed of late that my writing is better in the afternoon. The mornings are methodical, when all the blockwork and first-fix stuff takes place. The ornamentation or even de-ornamentation -- the things that separate writing from writing -- don't seem possible until later in the day, when I've established some perspective.
SIMON ARMITAGE
"Language is my enemy -- I spend my life battling with it", The Guardian, March 25, 2017
In the end, the secret of writing is to be a tortoise, not a hare.
JONATHAN KELLERMAN
"Novelist explains how psychology training honed his writing", USC News, February 25, 2016
I write fiction and I'm told it’s autobiography, I write autobiography and I'm told it's fiction, so since I'm so dim and they're so smart, let them decide what it is or it isn't.
PHILIP ROTH
Deception: A Novel
Writing is a conversation, to me. The best kind. You can't get interrupted.
GERALD ASHER
speech at the Symposium for Professional Wine Writers, February 2011
Failure has been my best friend as a writer. It tests you, to see if you have what it takes to see it through.
MARKUS ZUSAK
"Why I Write", The Guardian, March 28, 2008
The greater the length, the more beautiful will the piece be by reason of its size, provided that the whole be perspicuous.
ARISTOTLE
Poetics
Whenever they tell me children want this sort of book and children need this sort of writing, I am going to smile politely and shut my earlids. I am a writer, not a caterer. There are plenty of caterers. But what children most want and need is what we and they don't know they want and don't think they need, and only writers can offer it to them.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
"A Message About Messages", CBC Magazine
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
No reason at all why one should go on writing just for the sake of it. I think it is very important to stop when you haven't got anything to say.
JULIAN BARNES
The Paris Review, winter 2000
What writers do is they tell their own story constantly through other people's stories. They imagine other people, and those other people are carrying the burden of their struggles, their questions about themselves.
TOBIAS WOLFF
Fiction Writers Review, April 5, 2009
It's a principle of mine to come into the story as late as possible, and to tell it as fast as you can.
JOHN LE CARRÉ
interview, The Paris Review, summer 1997
Be a mere assistant to your unconscious. Do only half the work. The rest will do itself.
JEAN COCTEAU
Diary of an Unknown
Someone watches over us when we write. Mother. Teacher. Shakespeare. God.
MARTIN AMIS
London Fields
The process of creating is related to the process of dreaming although when you are writing you're doing it and when you're dreaming, it's doing you.
ROBERT STONE
attributed, A Writer's Book of Days
I couldn't imagine, and I don't say this with any pride, but I really couldn't imagine writing without a desperate deadline.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON
The Paris Review, fall 2000