quotations about writing
The life of a writer is absolute hell ... if he is a writer of fiction he lives in a world of fear. Each new day demands new ideas and he can never be sure whether he is going to come up with them or not.
ROALD DAHL
Boy
There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
attributed, Literary Agents: How to Get & Work with the Right One for You
I want to do something splendid ... something heroic or wonderful that won't be forgotten after I'm dead ... I think I shall write books.
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT
Little Women
As far back as I can remember, I've been writing. I've always had this wild imagination, and I love to embellish stories to make them more interesting. When I was a kid I had all these intricate histories for all my stuffed animals and dollhouse families, which I would type out on this old manual typewriter my parents set up for me in the corner of our TV room. I kept writing all through middle school, and in high school I got diverted a bit, but I picked it up again in college. I really didn't think I'd actually be a writer until I graduated and found that I just couldn't stop and go get a real job. Every time I finished something, another idea would follow right behind. So I went into waitressing and just wrote like crazy. At times it seemed really stupid, since I was totally broke and there was no kind of guarantee that I'd ever see anything come of it. Luckily, it did. But even if I hadn't sold a book by now I'd still be writing. It becomes a part of you, just something you do.
SARAH DESSEN
interview, Puffin Books
Fiction -- at least for me -- requires long, relatively uninterrupted time stretches in which to bring it to fruition. I've never been a two-hour-in-the-morning writer, who could put in another six hours on Sunday afternoon. For me, a novel requires weeks of living in a largely mental and wholly internal landscape. Everything else has to be relegated to the odd hour here, the bit of time there. Sadly, however, uninterrupted time blocks are not what life doles out today to any of us with regularity.
SAMUEL R. DELANY
interview, SF Site, April 2001
So much of a novelist's writing, as I have said, takes place in the unconscious: in those depths the last word is written before the first word appears on the paper. We remember details of our story, we do not invent them.
GRAHAM GREENE
The End of the Affair
The trouble with writing fiction is that it has to make sense, whereas real life doesn't. It's incredibly annoying for us scribblers.
IAIN M. BANKS
"Iain Banks: The Final Interview", The Guardian, June 14, 2013
I couldn't imagine, and I don't say this with any pride, but I really couldn't imagine writing without a desperate deadline.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON
The Paris Review, fall 2000
My plots are always rudimentary. Whatever I've accomplished certainly does not depend on my virtuosity with plot. Generally I don't even have a plot. What happens is that my characters engage in an action, and out of that action little bits of plot sometimes adhere to the narrative. I never have to worry about lifting a plot, because I don't conceive of a book that way.
NORMAN MAILER
The Paris Review, winter-spring 1964
With films, I just scribble a couple of notes for a scene. You don't have to do any writing at all, you just have your notes for the scene, which are written with the actors and the camera in mind. The actual script is a necessity for casting and budgeting, but the end product often doesn't bear much resemblance to the script--at least in my case.
WOODY ALLEN
The Paris Review, fall 1995
A good writer can watch a cat pad across the street and know what it is to be pounced upon by a Bengal tiger.
JOHN LE CARRÉ
attributed, The Twilight and Other Zones
If you want to write ... You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads.
RAY BRADBURY
attributed, Words from the Wise
Everything you look at can be turned into a story ... you can make a tale of everything you touch.
HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN
"The Elder Tree Mother"
Writer's block is only a failure of the ego.
NORMAN MAILER
attributed, A Writer's Time
You must keep sending work out; you must never let a manuscript do nothing but eat its head off in a drawer. You send that work out again and again, while you're working on another one. If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success -- but only if you persist.
ISAAC ASIMOV
attributed, How to Become a Famous Writer Before You're Dead
That writer who aspires to immortality, should imitate the sculptor, if he would make the labours of the pen as durable as those of the chisel. Like the sculptor, he should arrive at ultimate perfection, not by what he adds, but by what he takes away.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
One forges one's style on the terrible anvil of daily deadlines.
EMILE ZOLA
Le Figaro
The same common-sense which makes an author write good things, makes him dread they are not good enough to deserve reading.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Works of the Mind", Les Caractères
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
It's not the word made flesh we want in writing, in poetry and fiction, but the flesh made word.
WILLIAM H. GASS
On Being Blue