quotations about writing
I try to get a feeling of what's going on in the story before I put it down on paper, but actually most of this breaking-in period is one long, fantastic daydream, in which I think about anything but the work at hand. I can't turn out slews of stuff each day. I wish I could. I seem to have some neurotic need to perfect each paragraph--each sentence, even--as I go along.
WILLIAM STYRON
The Paris Review, spring 1954
Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay. I'm always irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It is a plunge into reality and it's very shocking to the system.
FLANNERY O'CONNOR
Mystery and Manners
When I start to write, I don't have any plan at all. I just wait for the story to come. I don't choose what kind of story it is or what's going to happen. I just wait.
HARUKI MURAKAMI
Paris Review, summer 2004
I'm glad that I didn't have the Internet when I started writing. I started writing when I was 20 and didn't show a word of it to anyone until I was 28. I had the sense to keep it to myself. Now the temptation with blogs and such, they're just getting it out there; maybe it would have been best to keep it to themselves.
DAVID SEDARIS
interview, Bohemian, June 2009
I will agree that inspired writing is liquid gold when it comes to getting our words on paper. However, only writing when one feels inspired is a quick way to produce little to no content. If we waited to exercise only when we felt inspired we likely wouldn't be getting much movement. When something isn't habit those feelings of inspiration start coming further and further in between.
DANIELLE SABRINA
"5 Habits Holding You Back From Creating Great Content", Huffington Post, February 29, 2016
I believe the first story I ever wrote was about a young girl who was terribly mistreated by her very cruel parents, and one day the girl fled to the woods to live amongst a pack of wolves. Hey, I was eleven, loved wolves, and had been grounded for what I felt was a minor infraction. Can you blame me?
VICTORIA LAURIE
Relate Magazine, April 1, 2011
For those who do not write and who never have been stirred by the creative urge, talk of muses seems a figure of speech, a quaint concept, but for those of us who live by the Word, our muses are as real and necessary as the soft clay of language which they help to sculpt.
DAN SIMMONS
Hyperion
For me, writing is just a thing I need to do everyday, like breathing or eating.
GUY CAPECELATRO III
"Power of music shines in Capecelatro's heartfelt album", Seacoast Online, March 30, 2017
Each book starts from ashes.
PHILIP ROTH
interview with Cynthia Haven, "The Book Haven"
All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know.
ERNEST HEMINGWAY
A Moveable Feast
You don't start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it's good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it. That's why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence. It's just so easy to give up!
OCTAVIA E. BUTLER
Locus Magazine, June 2000
Writing is a concentrated form of thinking. I don't know what I think about certain subjects, even today, until I sit down and try to write about them.
DON DELILLO
Conversations with Don DeLillo
Writing has freed me from the despair of living.
ANITA BROOKNER
The Paris Review, fall 1987
To me, writing is not a profession. You might as well call living a profession. Or having children. Anything you can't help doing.
VICKI BAUM
I Know What I'm Worth
The novelist is like the conductor of an orchestra, his back to the audience, his face invisible, summoning the experience of music for the people he cannot see. The writer as conductor also gets to compose the music and play all of the instruments, a task less formidable than it seems. What it requires is the conscious practice of providing an extraordinary experience for the reader, who should be oblivious to the fact that he is seeing words on paper.
SOL STEIN
Stein on Writing
The funny thing about writing is that whether you're doing it well or you're doing it poorly, it looks the exact same. That is actually one of the main ways that writing is different from ballet dancing.
JOHN GREEN
"July 19: A Day in the Life of a Writer (Who Has No Friends)", YouTube
One of the things that writers very quickly learn to avoid is talking their work away. Talking about your work hardens it prematurely, and weakens the charge. You need to keep a fluid sense of the work in hand--it has to be able to change almost without your being aware that it's changing.
TOBIAS WOLFF
The Paris Review, fall 2004
Once writing has become your major vice and greatest pleasure only death can stop it.
ERNEST HEMINGWAY
The Paris Review, spring 1958
It's easy, after all, not to be a writer. Most people aren't writers, and very little harm comes to them.
JULIAN BARNES
Flaubert's Parrot
I was always fascinated by the fact that you could take paper and ink and create worlds, images, characters. It seemed like magic.
CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON
"Q & A: Author Carlos Ruiz Zafon", Time, June 30, 2009