WRITING QUOTES VII

quotations about writing

Ideas are infinite--writers are hardwired to think that way. We keep it fresh by using new people, mixing character types and putting them in a different setting. It's always the first book all over again, but one idea can be told a thousand different ways. There are 88 keys on the piano, but you can make an infinite amount of music from those keys.

NORA ROBERTS

Time Magazine, November 29, 2007

Tags: Nora Roberts


I've been to a lot of places and done a lot of things, but writing was always first. It's a kind of pain I can't do without.

ROBERT PENN WARREN

National Observer, March 12, 1977

Tags: Robert Penn Warren


I'm not interested in writing short stories. Anything that doesn't take years of your life and drive you to suicide hardly seems worth doing.

CORMAC MCCARTHY

The Washington Post, November 13, 2009


I want to be a writer you can always depend on for a good read during your vacation, during your flight, during a time in your life when you want to forget the world around you. The nicest notes I've received from readers are those that tell me I've gotten them back into reading for entertainment. For me, there is no greater compliment.

JEFF ABBOTT

Publisher's Weekly, May 30, 2011


But most important of all is the structure of the incidents. For Tragedy is an imitation, not of men, but of an action and of life, and life consists in action.

ARISTOTLE

Poetics

Tags: Aristotle


You are that most ambiguous of citizens, the writer.

SAMUEL R. DELANY

The Motion of Light in Water

Tags: Samuel R. Delany


When you finish one book, you don't want to just write the same book again.

JEFFREY EUGENIDES

Slate, October 10, 2011


When the first-rate author wants an exquisite heroine or a lovely morning, he finds that all the superlatives have been worn shoddy by his inferiors. It should be a rule that bad writers must start with plain heroines and ordinary mornings, and, if they are able, work up to something better.

F. SCOTT FITZGERALD

Notebooks


When I'm writing, I am trying to find out who I am, who we are, what we're capable of, how we feel, how we lose and stand up, and go on from darkness into darkness.

MAYA ANGELOU

The Paris Review, fall 1990

Tags: Maya Angelou


The art is never about what you write about. The art is about how you write about what you write about.

CHRIS ABANI

attributed, Stylistic Approaches to Nigerian Fiction

Tags: Chris Abani


Prison always has been a good place for writers, killing, as it does, the twin demons of mobility and diversion.

DAN SIMMONS

Hyperion

Tags: Dan Simmons


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

Tags: Julian Barnes


Every writer in the country can write a beautiful sentence, or a hundred. What I am interested in is the ugly sentence that is also somehow beautiful.

DONALD BARTHELME

"On Paraguay"

Tags: Donald Barthelme


Every word written is a net to catch the word that has escaped.

JEANETTE WINTERSON

The Stone Gods

Tags: Jeanette Winterson


Writing is therapy. It's so relieving. I can be super overwhelmed with life and work or whatever is going on and I can take 10 or 15 minutes out of the day to put all of the thoughts I'm having out on paper. Not all the time the person I can talk to and not judge me. Writing and my journals are my best friend.

DELICIA RASHAD

"Local Poet Releases Latest Book on Life, Love and Tea", San Diego Voice and Viewpoint, March 30, 2017


What separates the professionally successful ... from all the rest is their ability to stay steady, to have stamina. It is one thing to write a good sentence, another to write a good book.

KATY LEDERER

interview, Identity Theory, February 12, 2005

Tags: Katy Lederer


There are two men inside the artist, the poet and the craftsman. One is born a poet. One becomes a craftsman.

EMILE ZOLA

letter to Cezanne

Tags: Emile Zola


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


Oh, I've discarded a great many [poems]. And occasionally I've discarded and then resurrected. I would find a crumpled yellow ball of paper in the wastebasket, in the morning, and open it to see what the hell I'd been up to; and occasionally it was something that needed only a very slight change to be brought off, which I'd missed the day before.

CONRAD AIKEN

interview, The Paris Review, winter-spring 1968

Tags: Conrad Aiken


I've never written the things I'd like to write that I've admired all my life. Maybe one never does.

ELIZABETH BISHOP

Conversations with Elizabeth Bishop

Tags: Elizabeth Bishop