
“not writing is not good but trying to write when you can't is worse.”
Source: The Last Night of the Earth Poems
Source: The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor
“not writing is not good but trying to write when you can't is worse.”
Source: The Last Night of the Earth Poems
The Paris Review interview
Context: Many writers write a great deal, but very few write more than a very little of the real thing. So most writing must be displaced activity. When cockerels confront each other and daren’t fight, they busily start pecking imaginary grains off to the side. That’s displaced activity. Much of what we do at any level is a bit like that, I fancy. But hard to know which is which. On the other hand, the machinery has to be kept running. The big problem for those who write verse is keeping the machine running without simply exercising evasion of the real confrontation. If Ulanova, the ballerina, missed one day of practice, she couldn’t get back to peak fitness without a week of hard work. Dickens said the same about his writing—if he missed a day he needed a week of hard slog to get back into the flow.
Bol'shevistskoe rukovodstvo. Perepiska 1912-1927, [Bolshevik Leadership, Correspondence 1912-1927], p. 90
Stalin's speeches, writings and authorised interviews
Source: About Writing: Seven Essays, Four Letters, and Five Interviews
“Write it, damn you, write it! What else are you good for?”
“If you write to impress it will always be bad, but if you write to express it will be good”
"somewhat less sinister ducks" Blog entry (23 April 2004) http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/2004/04/somewhat-less-sinister-ducks.asp