“If I waited for perfection, I would never write a word.”

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Margaret Atwood348

Canadian writer 1939

Anne Tyler (1941) American novelist

“if I wait to be
perfect
before I love myself
I will always be
unsatisfied
and ungrateful

if I wait until
all the flaws, chips,
and cracks disappear
I will be the cup
that stands on the shelf
and is never used”

Joyce Rupp (1943) American writer

“My God, if I had a heart, I would write my hate on ice, and wait for the sun to show.”

Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) Colombian writer

“Words, words, words, a million million words circle in my head like hawks, waiting to dive onto the page to rend and tear the only two words I want to write.

Why me?”

Christopher Moore book Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal

Source: Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal

“I want to write — I want to write — I want to write and never never never will. I know it and I am so unhappy and it seems as though nothing else mattered. Whatever I'm doing, it's always there, an ultimate longing there saying, "Write this — write that — write —" and I can't. Lack ability, time, strength, and duration of vision. I wish someone would tell me brutally, "You can never write anything.”

Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1906–2001) American aviator and author

Take up home gardening!"
Bring Me a Unicorn (1971)

“This sequel to The Female Eunuch is the book I said I would never write.”

Germaine Greer (1939) Australian feminist author

"Recantation"
The Whole Woman (1999)

“If I knew words enough, I could write the longest love letter in the world and never get tired”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

Source: The Best Early Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald

“Let the snake wait under
his weed
and the writing
be of words, slow and quick, sharp
to strike, quiet to wait,
sleepless.”

William Carlos Williams (1883–1963) American poet

"A Sort of a Song"
The Wedge (1944)
Context: Let the snake wait under
his weed
and the writing
be of words, slow and quick, sharp
to strike, quiet to wait,
sleepless.
— through metaphor to reconcile
the people and the stones.
Compose. (No ideas
but in things) Invent!
Saxifrage is my flower that splits
the rocks.

“I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of hunger for life that gnaws in us all.”

Richard Wright (1908–1960) African-American writer

Source: American Hunger (1977), p. 77

“You know that I write slowly. This is chiefly because I am never satisfied until I have said as much as possible in a few words, and writing briefly takes far more time than writing at length.”

Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855) German mathematician and physical scientist

As quoted in Calculus Gems (1992) by George F. Simmons

“If I waited for perfection, I would never write a word.”

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Margaret Atwood348

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