Quotes about writing

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“To write something you have to risk making a fool of yourself.”

“The first thing you have to know about writing is that it is something you must do everyday. There are two reasons for this rule: Getting the work done and connecting with your unconscious mind.”

“Create dangerously, for people who read dangerously…. Writing, knowing in part that no matter how trivial your words may seem, someday, somewhere, someone may risk his or her life to read them.”

“Whenever you write on a subject that questions the status quo, there are bound to be many who wrestle with the issues”

“There was a moment when I changed from an amateur to a professional. I assumed the burden of a profession, which is to write even when you don't want to, don't much like what you're writing, and aren't writing particularly well.”

“When male authors write love stories, the heroine tends to end up dead.”

“I have forced myself to begin writing when I've been utterly exhausted, when I've felt my soul as thin as a playing card…and somehow the activity of writing changes everything.”

“The author should die once he has finished writing. So as not to trouble the path of the text.”

“It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous.”

“Memory is quite central for me. Part of it is that I like the actual texture of writing through memory…”

“It's doubtful that anyone with an internet connection at his workplace is writing good fiction.”

“When they give you lined paper, write the other way.”

“Writing is like breathing, it's possible to learn to do it well, but the point is to do it no matter what.”

“Know that you will eventually have to leave everything behind; the writing will demand it of you.”

“Melt all the guns, I thought, break the knives, burn the guillotines-and the malicious will still write letters that kill.”

“There are very few innocent sentences in writing.”

“The world is your exercise book, the pages on which you do your sums. It is not reality, though you may express reality there if you wish. You are also free to write lies, or nonsense, or to tear the pages.”

“I am not at all in a humor for writing; I must write on till I am.”

“Rock 'n' roll is an attitude, it's not a musical form of a strict sort. It's a way of doing things, of approaching things. Writing can be rock 'n' roll, or a movie can be rock 'n' roll. It's a way of living your life.”

“I want life. I want to read it and write it and feel it and live it. I want, for as much of the time as possible in this blink-of-an-eye existence we have, to feel all that can be felt.”

“One must be an inventor to read well. There is then creative reading as well as creative writing.”

“Write as if your parents are dead.”

“If you like not my writing, go read something else.”

“There are lots of guys out there who write a better prose line than I do and who have a better understanding of what people are really like and what humanity is supposed to mean – hell, I know that.”

“I find that most people know what a story is until they sit down to write one.”

“Writing is more about discovery than invention.”

“It is rather exciting to write by moonlight.”

“The most durable thing in writing is style, and style is the single most valuable investment a writer can make with his time.”

“Writing is hard work. But if you want to become a writer you will become one. Nothing will stop you.”

“Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.”

“Talking is a hydrant in the yard and writing is a faucet upstairs in the house. Opening the first takes all the pressure off the second.”

“That 'writers write' is meant to be self-evident. People like to say it. I find it is hardly ever true. Writers drink. Writers rant. Writers phone. Writers sleep. I have met very few writers who write at all.”

“Different people were good at different things, Lena mused. Lena was good at writing thank-you notes, for instance, and Effie was good at being happy.”

“I'm telling you why we broke up, Ed. I'm writing this letter, the whole truth of why it happened. And the truth is that I goddamn loved you so much.”

“If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are gone, either write things worth reading or do things worth writing.”

“Two hours of writing fiction leaves this writer completely drained. For those two hours he has been in a different place with totally different people.”

“i believe that basically you write for two people; yourself to try and make it absolutely perfect; or if not that then wonderful. then you write for who you love whether they can read or write or not and whether they are alive or dead.”

“This is worse than Hollywood, he thought. A girl comes in with a pork chop and I write a song for her.”

“Panicky despair is an underrated element of writing.”

“… she felt about reading what some writers felt about writing: that it was impossible not to do it and that at this late stage of her life she had been chosen to read as others were chosen to write.”

“I’m a word freak. I like words. I’ve always compared writing to music. That’s the way I feel about good paragraphs. When it really works, it’s like music.”

“nothing can save
you
except
writing.
it keeps the walls
from
failing.”

“Maybe you're one of those people who writes poems, but rarely reads them. Let me put this as delicately as I can: If you don't read, your writing is going to suck.”

“I hate writing, I love having written.”

“Upon being asked by a fan how to become a writer, Stephen King replied, "Write.”

“I'm not a writer with a drinking problem, I'm a drinker with a writing problem.”

“Nothing quite has reality for me till I write it all down--revising and embellishing as I go. I'm always waiting for things to be over so I can get home and commit them to paper.”

“You mean you're comparing our lives to a sonnet? A strict form, but freedom within it? Yes. Mrs. Whatsit said. You're given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself. What you say is completely up to you.”

“A good novelist does not lead his characters, he follows them. A good novelist does not create events, he watches them happen and then writes down what he sees.”

“The traditional statement about language is that it is in itself living, and that writing is the dead part of language.”

“At that moment, the urge to be writing was stronger than any notion she had of what she might write.”

“Write in recollection and amazement for yourself”

“You write for the people in high school who ignored you. We all do.”

“I write because I hate. A lot. Hard.”

“I want to write about people who dream and wait for the night to end, who long for the light so they can hold the ones they love.”

“Whenever I have endured or accomplished some difficult task -- such as watching television, going out socially or sleeping -- I always look forward to rewarding myself with the small pleasure of getting back to my typewriter and writing something.”

“If I lose the light of the sun, I will write by candlelight, moonlight, no light. If I lose paper and ink, I will write in blood on forgotten walls. I will write always. I will capture nights all over the world and bring them to you.”

“Self-consciousness is the enemy of all art, be it acting, writing, painting, or living itself, which is the greatest art of all.”

“Nothing but writing rests me; only then do I seem completely myself!”

“I read hungrily and delightedly, and have realized since that you can’t write unless you read.”

“He is trying to recapture his innocence, yet all he succeeds in doing (by writing) is to inoculate the world with a virus of his disillusionment.”

“I write as a function. Without it I would fall ill and die. It's as much a part of one as the liver or intestine, and just about as glamorous.”

“History is written by the victors, but it's victims who write the memoirs.”

“If you can speak what you will never hear, if you can write what you will never read, you have done rare things.”

“One day, I shall explode like an artillery shell and all my bits will be found on the writing table.”

“I don't see how you can write anything of value if you don't offend someone.”

“If they give you lined paper, write the other way.”

“Once writing has become your major vice and greatest pleasure only death can stop it.”

“I can't believe it! Reading and writing actually paid off!”

“Exercise the writing muscle every day, even if it is only a letter, notes, a title list, a character sketch, a journal entry. Writers are like dancers, like athletes. Without that exercise, the muscles seize up.”

“My own great-grandfather, who said simply enough, "No wicked man could write such a book as this; and no good man would write it unless it were true and he were commanded of God to do so.”

“Find what causes a commotion in your heart. Find a way to write about that”

“Write what you know will always be excellent advice for those who ought not to write at all. Write what you think, what you imagine, what you suspect!”

“A writer writes what he knows, in ways that are natural to him.”

“It takes a lot of energy and a lot of neurosis to write a novel. If you were really sensible, you'd do something else.”

“No black woman writer in this culture can write "too much". Indeed, no woman writer can write "too much"… No woman has ever written enough.”

“When I read a book, I put in all the imagination I can, so that it is almost like writing the book as well as reading it - or rather, it is like living it. It makes reading so much more exciting, but I don't suppose many people try to do it.”

“Trying to write about love is ultimately like trying to have a dictionary represent life. No matter how many words there are, there will never be enough.”

“A certain ruthlessness and a sense of alienation from society is as essential to creative writing as it is to armed robbery.”

“An autobiography is a book a person writes about his own life and it is usually full of all sorts of boring details.”

“But it's writing, damn it, not washing the car or putting on eyeliner. If you can take it seriously, we can do business. If you can't or won't, it's time for you to close the book and do something else.

Wash the car, maybe.”

“If I could just write it down in a piece of paper, then maybe she could get a decent night's sleep, eat a little of her dinner. Maybe she could have a minute's worth of peace.”

“Write about the emotions you fear the most.”

“What do you do when Mom leaves you alone like this? (Kat)
I write romance novels. (Acheron)”

“it is all very well for you to write simply and the simpler the better. But do not start to think so damned simply. Know how complicated it is and then state it simply.”

“Just start the sentence… and see what happens. This is how we write.”

“The best life for a writer is the life which helps him write the best books he can.”

“I suggest to my students that they write under a pseudonym for a week. That allows young men to write as women, and women as men. It allows them a lot of freedom they don't have ordinarily.”

“That is why I write - to try to turn sadness into longing, solitude into remembrance.”

“Writing is utter solitude, the descent into the cold abyss of oneself.”

“The story is always better than your ability to write it.”

“Someday," Magnus said, looking at the crumpled royal person at his feet, "I must write my memoirs.”

“A writer should write what he has to say and not speak it.”

“Writing is a journey into the unknown.”

“Life's like a movie, write your own ending. Keep believing, keep pretending. We've done just what we set out to do. Thanks to the lovers, the dreamers and you.”

“At first, writing for The New Yorker was very scary to me. I couldn't imagine anything that I would write in that typeface.”

“I learned to write by reading the kind of books I wished I'd written.”

“To be a writer you have to write -- and no academic degree is going to do the writing for you.”

“Just as a good rain clears the air, a good writing day clears the psyche.”