
“If you want to be a writer-stop talking about it and sit down and write!”
Preface to Lear (1972; London: Methuen, 1983) p. lvii
“If you want to be a writer-stop talking about it and sit down and write!”
On how he wants to be perceived as a writer in “Édouard Louis: 'I want to be a writer of violence. The more you talk about it, the more you can undo it'” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jun/09/edouard-louis-i-want-to-be-a-writer-of-violence-the-more-you-talk-about-it-the-more-you-can-undo-it in The Guardian (2018 Jun 9)
“Our age has need of violence," he writes. And he is violence.”
Source: Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love"--The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin
Lessons of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1990)
Violence is golden
A Sky Without Eagles (2014)
"Come on, Big Boy — Let Me See Your Manuscript," review and interview by Herbert Gold, The New York Times (1987-08-02)
On the threat of violence in “Meena Kandasamy interview: ‘I don’t know if I’m idiotic – or courageous’” https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/meena-kandasamy-interview-i-don-t-know-if-i-m-idiotic-or-courageous-9238644.html in the Independent (2014 Apr 6)
“Writing about music is like dancing about architecture — it's a really stupid thing to want to do.”
This has commonly been paraphrased "Talking about music is like dancing about architecture." More info at "Alan P. Scott : Talking about music..." http://home.pacifier.com/~ascott/they/tamildaa.htm Also, Costello has denied http://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/11/08/writing-about-music/ having coined this, in an interview in Q magazine, tentatively attributing the quote instead to Martin Mull.
Misattributed
Letter to Shirley Wiley (30 March 1954), in The Letters of E. B. White (1989), p. 391