“not writing is not good but trying to write when you can't is worse.”
Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer
Source: The Last Night of the Earth Poems
“Not-writing is a good deal worse than writing.”
Source: The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor
Last update June 3, 2021. History
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Flannery O’Connor82
American novelist, short story writer 1925–1964Related quotes
Ted Hughes (1930–1998) English poet and children's writer
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.
Eva Ibbotson (1925–2010) British children's writer
Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Bol'shevistskoe rukovodstvo. Perepiska 1912-1927, [Bolshevik Leadership, Correspondence 1912-1927], p. 90
Stalin's speeches, writings and authorised interviews
Samuel R. Delany (1942) American author, professor and literary critic
Source: About Writing: Seven Essays, Four Letters, and Five Interviews
“Write it, damn you, write it! What else are you good for?”
James Joyce (1882–1941) Irish novelist and poet
“If you write to impress it will always be bad, but if you write to express it will be good”
Thornton Wilder (1897–1975) American playwright and novelist
Neil Gaiman (1960) English fantasy writer
"somewhat less sinister ducks" Blog entry (23 April 2004) http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/2004/04/somewhat-less-sinister-ducks.asp
