quotations about writing
Fiction is about everything human and we are made out of dust, and if you scorn getting yourself dusty, then you shouldn't try to write fiction. It's not a grand enough job for you.
FLANNERY O'CONNOR
Mystery and Manners
I really believe there are many excellent writers who have never written because they never could begin. This is especially the case of people of great sensitiveness, or of people of advanced education. Professors suffer most of all from this inhibition. Many of them carry their unwritten books to the grave. They overestimate the magnitude of the task, they overestimate the greatness of the final result. A child in a prep school will write the History of Greece and fetch it home finished after school. "He wrote a fine History of Greece the other day," says his fond father. Thirty years later the child, grown to be a professor, dreams of writing the History of Greece -- the whole of it from the first Ionic invasion of the Aegean to the downfall of Alexandria. But he dreams. He never starts. He can't. It's too big. Anybody who has lived around a college knows the pathos of those unwritten books.
STEPHEN LEACOCK
How to Write
The final lesson a writer learns is that everything can nourish the writer. The dictionary, a new word, a voyage, an encounter, a talk on the street, a book, a phrase learned.
ANAÏS NIN
attributed, French Writers of the Past
The creations of a great writer are little more than the moods and passions of his own heart, given surnames and Christian names, and sent to walk the earth.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
letter to the editor, Dublin Daily Express, February 27, 1895
I am not someone who is very good at writing a certain amounts every day. I know that's what one is told one should do, but what I tend to do is kind of sequester myself away while I am in London for a few weeks at a time and become very antisocial and write very, very intensively over a relatively short time. I am much more of a burst writer than a steady-state writer.
CHINA MIÉVILLE
"In a Carapace of Light: A Conversation with China Miéville", Clarkesworld
Well, when I was a young writer the people we read were Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Sartre, Camus, Celine, Malraux. And to begin with, I was a bit of a copycat writer and very derivative and tried to write a novel using their voices, really.... I keep it out of print.
MORDECAI RICHLER
interview, Brick 81, 1989
Rejections are painful, but inevitable. They're every writer's rite of passage.
OCTAVIA E. BUTLER
"Furor Scribendi", Bloodchild and Other Stories
We all often feel like we are pulling teeth, even those writers whose prose ends up being the most natural and fluid. The right words and sentences just do not come pouring out like ticker tape most of the time.
ANNE LAMOTT
Bird by Bird
He did not seem to know enough about the people in his novel. They did not seem to trust him.
JAMES BALDWIN
Another Country
I know exactly what I want to write. I do not write until I do. Usually I write it all down only once. And that goes relatively quickly, since it really depends only on how fast I type.
HANNAH ARENDT
interview, ZDF TV, Zur Person, October 28, 1964
The more books we read, the clearer it becomes that the true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece and that no other task is of any consequence.
CYRIL CONNOLLY
The Selected Essays of Cyril Connolly
It is hard to make a good documentary about writing. Writing is internal, it slowly takes shape in a mind, sometimes after the not very cinematic process of staring at a wall until the words come.
JULIA COOPER
"Obit doc examines the art of the obituary at The New York Times", The Globe and Mail, March 30, 2017
There are only two kinds of books which you can write and be pretty sure you're going to make a living -- cook books and detective stories.
REX STOUT
Royal Decree: Conversations with Rex Stout
The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true.
JOHN STEINBECK
New York Times, June 2, 1969
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
No music. No rituals. At home I write in my office or on the laptop in the kitchen where our puppy likes to sleep, and I love his company. But I've trained myself to be able to work anywhere, and I write on trains, planes, in automobiles (if I'm not the driver), airports, hotel rooms. I travel often. If I couldn't write wherever I was I would get little done. I also can write in short bursts. Fifteen minutes are enough to move a story forward.
GAIL CARSON LEVINE
interview, Bookshop Talk, September 22, 2011
Fiction is based on reality unless you're a fairy-tale artist, you have to get your knowledge of life from somewhere. You have to know the material you're writing about before you alter it.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON
interview, Associated Press, 2003
The writer is delegated to declare and to celebrate man's proven capacity for greatness of heart and spirit -- for gallantry in defeat -- for courage, compassion and love. In the endless war against weakness and despair, these are the bright rally-flags of hope and of emulation.
JOHN STEINBECK
Nobel Prize acceptance speech, December 10, 1962
Just as the light and weightless vegetation of saltpeter floats over the old walls of houses as soon as the owner gets careless, so the literary vocation springs up in you.
FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA
letter to Jose Bello, summer 1925
Of all that is written I love only what a man has written with his blood. Write with blood, and you will find that blood is spirit.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Thus Spoke Zarathustra