quotations about writing
One never knows enough about characters in real life to put them into novels. One gets started and then, suddenly, one can not remember what toothpaste they use; what are their views on interior decoration, and one is stuck utterly. No, major characters emerge; minor ones may be photographed.
GRAHAM GREENE
The Paris Review, autumn 1953
An author in his book must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
letter to Madame Louise Colet, December 9, 1852
As things stand now, I am going to be a writer. I'm not sure that I'm going to be a good one or even a self-supporting one, but until the dark thumb of fate presses me to the dust and says "you are nothing," I will be a writer.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON
Gonzo
Learn to write well, or not to write at all.
JOHN DRYDEN
Essay on Satire
There is no ideal length, but you develop a little interior gauge that tells you whether or not you're supporting the house or detracting from it. When a piece gets too long, the tension goes out of it. That word--tension--has an animal insistence for me. A piece of writing rises and falls with tension. The writer holds one end of the rope and the reader holds the other end--is the rope slack, or is it tight? Does it matter to the reader what the next sentence is going to be?
JOHN JEREMIAH SULLIVAN
"Everything is more complicated than you think", The Economist, November 14, 2011
A good writer can watch a cat pad across the street and know what it is to be pounced upon by a Bengal tiger.
JOHN LE CARRÉ
attributed, The Twilight and Other Zones
You must write according to your feelings, be sure those feelings are true, and let everything else go hang.
JULIAN BARNES
Flaubert's Parrot
I've gotten a little superstitious about listening to music when I write. Once a story is going somewhere, I keep listening to the same music whenever I work on that story. It seems to help me keep in voice, and alternatively, if I need to make some kind of dramatic shift, I'll go and put on something different to shake myself awake.
KELLY LINK
"Words by Flashlight", Sybil's Garage, June 7, 2006
What I like to do is write the story, see where it takes me -- and then check out the details I don't know. When I first started writing, there were a lot of things about the world that I understood but didn't have the vocabulary for -- and even more things that I just had no idea about. For instance, do you know all the parts of a door frame? Or what flowers bloom in the spring in alpine climates? There's a surprising amount of homework involved in writing a book.
PATRICIA BRIGGS
interview, Bitten by Books, March 30, 2010
I turn sentences around. That's my life. I write a sentence and then I turn it around. Then I look at it and turn it around again.
PHILIP ROTH
Ghost Writer
If you don't have the time to read, you don't have the time or the tools to write.
STEPHEN KING
On Writing
At the age of fourteen I discovered writing as an escape from a world of reality in which I felt acutely uncomfortable.
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
foreword, Sweet Bird of Youth
A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.
THOMAS MANN
Essays of Three Decades
Nothing can destroy the good writer. The only thing that can alter the good writer is death. Good ones don't have time to bother with success or getting rich.
WILLIAM FAULKNER
The Paris Review, spring 1956
Crossing out is an art that is, perhaps, even more difficult than writing. It requires the sharpest eye to decide what is superfluous and must be removed. And it requires ruthlessness toward yourself -- the greatest ruthlessness and self-sacrifice. You must know how to sacrifice parts in the name of the whole.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
Theme and Plot
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
It is because we have had such great writers in the past that a writer is driven far out past where he can go, out to where no one can help him.
ERNEST HEMINGWAY
Nobel Prize speech, December 10, 1954
There is absolutely everything in great fiction but a clear answer.
EUDORA WELTY
On Writing
Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.
FLANNERY O'CONNOR
attributed, The Book of Poisonous Quotes
Publishing is a terrible invasion of my privacy. I like to write. I live to write. But I write just for myself and my own pleasure.
J. D. SALINGER
attributed, Salinger: A Biography