WRITING QUOTES XXVI

quotations about writing

Remember that in today's market, distribution and promotion are as important as craft. But don't forget what made you want to write fiction. If it was for the money, you're in the wrong business!

ELIZABETH ZELVIN

interview, Book Browsing, July 26, 2012

Tags: Elizabeth Zelvin


Wearing down seven number-two pencils is a good day's work.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY

The Paris Review, spring 1958

Tags: Ernest Hemingway


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


Everything you look at can be turned into a story ... you can make a tale of everything you touch.

HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN

"The Elder Tree Mother"

Tags: Hans Christian Andersen


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

Tags: Isaac Asimov


Someone watches over us when we write. Mother. Teacher. Shakespeare. God.

MARTIN AMIS

London Fields

Tags: Martin Amis


Writing is eternal,
For therein the dead heart liveth, the clay-cold tongue is eloquent,
And the quick eye of the reader is cleared by the reed of the scribe.
As a fossil in the rock, or a coin in the mortar of a ruin,
So the symbolled thoughts tell of a departed soul:
The plastic hand hath its witness in a statue, and exactitude of vision in a picture,
And so, the mind, that was among us, in its writings is embalmed.

MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER

Proverbial Philosophy

Tags: Martin Farquhar Tupper


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

Tags: Philip Roth


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


Everybody wants to feel that you're writing to a certain demographic because that's good business, but I've never done that ... I tried to write stories that would interest me. I'd say, what would I like to read?... I don't think you can do your best work if you're writing for somebody else, because you never know what that somebody else really thinks or wants.

STAN LEE

Brandweek, May 2000


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

Tags: Tennessee Williams


While I am writing, the sea's roar is coming up to me, and I close my eyes. I am looking into an unborn and shapeless world that longs to be called to life and order, I am looking into a throng of phantoms of human forms which beckon me to conjure them and set them free: some of them tragic, some of them ridiculous, and some that are both at once.

THOMAS MANN

Tonio Kröger


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

Tags: Ursula K. Le Guin


Madness is terrific I can assure you, and not to be sniffed at; and in its lava I still find most of the things I write about. It shoots out of one everything shaped, final, not in mere driblets, as sanity does.

VIRGINIA WOOLF

Letters

Tags: Virginia Woolf


The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof, shit detector. This is the writer's radar and all great writers have had it.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY

Paris Review, spring 1958


Why do you keep reading a book? Usually to find out what happens. Why do you give up and stop reading it? There may be lots of reasons. But often the answer is you don't care what happens. So what makes the difference between caring and not caring? The author's cruelty. And the reader's sympathy ... it takes a mean author to write a good story.

GAIL CARSON LEVINE

Writing Magic

Tags: Gail Carson Levine


Write. Don't talk about writing. Don't tell me about your wonderful story ideas. Don't give me a bunch of "somedays." Plant your ass and scribble, type, keyboard. If you have any talent at all, it will leak out despite your failure to pay attention in English.

GLEN COOK

interview, SF Site, September 2005


The publishers want series, obviously. Originally, they wanted me to do the Garrett series along with another similar series, so it would be one book every six months. Eventually I'd just do the outlines and they'd get some poor unknown author to flesh out the stories. That's why you see so many books by a famous author and an unknown. You can make half the money basically by selling your name. The thing is, once your name is on enough bad books, maybe it isn't worth all that much any more.

GLEN COOK

interview, Quantum Muse


If I cannot be myself in what I write, then the whole is nothing but lies and humbug.

HENRIK IBSEN

letter to Björnstjerne Björnson, September 12, 1865


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