WRITING QUOTES XV

quotations about writing

I held out my book. It was precious to me, as were all the things I'd written; even where I despised their inadequacy there was not one I would disown. Each tore its way from my entrails. Each had shortened my life, killed me with its own special little death.

TANITH LEE

The Book of the Damned

Tags: Tanith Lee


A writer should be able to express himself easily, naturally, copiously in a form that frees his mind, his energies. Why should he hobble himself with formalities?

SAUL BELLOW

The Paris Review, winter 1966


For a moment, I debated whether I should tell someone about the words I'd started writing down, but I couldn't. In a way, I felt ashamed, even though my writing was the one thing that whispered okayness in my ear. I didn't speak it, to anyone.

MARKUS ZUSAK

Getting the Girl

Tags: Markus Zusak


Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college.

KURT VONNEGUT

A Man Without a Country


Fictional characters are made of words, not flesh; they do not have free will, they do not exercise volition. They are easily born, and as easily killed off.

JOHN BANVILLE

attributed, Irish Writers and Their Creative Process


Don't write too much. Concentrate your sweat on one story, rather than dissipate it over a dozen.

JACK LONDON

"Getting Into Print", Editor magazine, 1903


There are probably seven persons, in all, who really like my work; and they are enough. I should write even if I were the only patient reader, for my aim is merely self-expression.

H. P. LOVECRAFT

"The Defence Remains Open!"

Tags: H. P. Lovecraft


Yet do not miss the moral, my good men.
For Saint Paul says that all that's written well
Is written down some useful truth to tell.
Then take the wheat and let the chaff lie still.

GEOFFREY CHAUCER

The Canterbury Tales

Tags: Geoffrey Chaucer


Writing is creative, which is right brain activity. Editing is rational, logical and process/rule driven, which is left-brain activity. It seems that, if you switch consistently between the two, the creative process becomes derailed by all the rules and forms. You scare it back into the shadows.

DAVID CHISLETT

"Editing Is Not Writing", Books LIVE, February 12, 2016


Writing groups are the best things to happen to a writer since the invention of spell check. (I rely heavily on both so I would know.)

DASHA FAYVINOVA

"9 Reasons Joining A Writing Group Is One Of The Best Ways A Writer Can Grow", Bustle, February 8, 2016


When we attempt to articulate our tender feelings in writing, we enter an inner dialogue of self-exploration: we forage for the more precise word, the more resonant phrasing. If the writing is done with particular care and attention, there is a Goldilocks quality to it: We rustle through an assortment of terms, discarding one, perhaps as "too weak" or another "too ordinary" until we settle upon the one that is "just right". In doing so, we have discovered something about ourselves.

DANIEL GRIFFIN

"Don't Tell Him You Love Him... Put It in Writing", Huffington Post, February 15, 2016


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

Tags: Craig Johnson


I believe one writes because one has to create a world in which one can live. I could not live in any of the worlds offered to me -- the world of my parents, the world of war, the world of politics. I had to create a world of my own, like a climate, a country, an atmosphere in which I could breathe, reign, and recreate myself when destroyed by living. That, I believe, is the reason for every work of art.

ANAÏS NIN

diary, February 1954

Tags: Anaïs Nin


The reason I write so slowly is because I try never to leave a sentence until it's as perfect as I can make it. So there isn't a word in any of my books that hasn't been gone over 40 times.

TOM ROBBINS

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

Tags: Tom Robbins


There's something paralyzing about being a writer that you have to escape.... The 26 letters distance us from our own hesitations and they make us sound as if we know what we're doing. We know grammar, we know prose, but actually we're all just struggling in the dark, really.

NICHOLSON BAKER

interview, Interview Magazine, September 16, 2013

Tags: Nicholson Baker


I like that every page in every book can have a gem on it. It's probably what I love most about writing--that words can be used in a way that's like a child playing in a sandpit, rearranging things, swapping them around. They're the best moments in a day of writing -- when an image appears that you didn't know would be there when you started work in the morning.

MARKUS ZUSAK

The Book Thief


I understood that my real problem with writing was not that I couldn't do it mentally. I couldn't do it physically. I could not sit still. Literally, could not sit still. So I had to solve that. I used some long scarves to tie myself into my chair. I tied myself in with a pack of cigarettes on one side and coffee on the other, and when I instinctively bolted upright after a few minutes, I'd say, Oh, shit. I'm tied down. I've got to keep writing.

LOUISE ERDRICH

The Paris Review, winter 2010

Tags: Louise Erdrich


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

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Any writer, I suppose, feels that the world into which he was born is nothing less than a conspiracy against the cultivation of his talent--which attitude certainly has a great deal to support it. On the other hand, it is only because the world looks on his talent with such frightening indifference that the artist is compelled to make his talent important.

JAMES BALDWIN

Notes of a Native Son

Tags: James Baldwin


Journalism is a good place for any writer to start -- the retailing of fact is always a useful trade and can it help you learn to appreciate the declarative sentence. A young writer is easily tempted by the allusive and ethereal and ironic and reflective, but the declarative is at the bottom of most good writing.

GARRISON KEILLOR

"Post to the Host", July 2005