
“I can’t write five words but that I change seven.”
Interview, The Paris Review (Summer 1956)
“I can’t write five words but that I change seven.”
“I begin with writing the first
sentence—and trusting to Almighty
God for the second.”
Source: The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
“All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know.”
Source: A Moveable Feast (1964), Ch. 2
Context: I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, "Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know."
Source: On Writing Well (Fifth Edition, orig. pub. 1976), Chapter 2, Simplicity, p. 12.
Source: Magids Series, The Merlin Conspiracy (2003), p. 7.
First lines of the novel.