WRITING QUOTES X

quotations about writing

I think without writing I would feel completely useless.

SAM SHEPARD

The Observer, March 20, 2010

Tags: Sam Shepard


Every writer is an iron-monger that melts down old junk into new steel.

AUSTIN O'MALLEY

Keystones of Thought

Tags: Austin O'Malley


To string incongruities and absurdities together in a wandering and sometimes purposeless way, and seem innocently unaware that they are absurdities, is the basis of the American art, if my position is correct.

MARK TWAIN

"How to Tell a Story"

Tags: Mark Twain


To turn experience into speech -- that is, to classify, to categorize, to conceptualize, to grammarize, to syntactify it -- is always a betrayal of experience, a falsification of it; but only so betrayed can it be dealt with at all, and only in so dealing with it did I ever feel a man, alive and kicking.

JOHN BARTH

The End of the Road

Tags: John Barth


Write as the wind blows and command all words like an army!

HILAIRE BELLOC

The Path to Rome

Tags: Hilaire Belloc


Writing is a part of healing, of digging into society.

KHALED KHALIFA

"Syrian novelist Khaled Khalifa tells the stories of a bleeding, beautiful country", Syria Direct, March 23, 2017


When I'm writing I find it's the only time that I feel completely self-possessed, even when the writing itself is not going too well. It's fine therapy for people who are perpetually scared of nameless threats as I am most of the time.

WILLIAM STYRON

The Paris Review, spring 1954


Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing.

NORMAN MAILER

The New York Times Book Review, September 17, 1965

Tags: Norman Mailer


There are probably seven persons, in all, who really like my work; and they are enough. I should write even if I were the only patient reader, for my aim is merely self-expression.

H. P. LOVECRAFT

"The Defence Remains Open!"

Tags: H. P. Lovecraft


You might get the impression that I have a mild contempt for storytelling, which is only somewhat true. For example, I really like Agatha Christie. She obeys the rules of the genre at first, but then occasionally she manages to do very personal things. In my case, I think I start from the opposite point. At first, I don't obey, I don't plot, but then from time to time, I say to myself, Come on, there's got to be a story. I control myself. But I will never give up a beautiful fragment merely because it doesn't fit in the story.

MICHEL HOUELLEBECQ

The Paris Review, fall 2010

Tags: Michel Houellebecq


Things may not be immediately discernible in what a man writes, and in this sometimes he is fortunate; but eventually they are quite clear and by these and the degree of alchemy that he possesses he will endure or be forgotten.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY

Nobel Prize speech, December 10, 1954

Tags: Ernest Hemingway


I can't avoid writing. It's a sort of nervous tic I have developed since I gave up needlepoint.

CLARE BOOTHE LUCE

"Fast and Luce", Vanity Fair, March 1988

Tags: Clare Boothe Luce


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


Write books only if you are going to say in them the things you would never dare confide to anyone.

EMIL CIORAN

The Trouble with Being Born

Tags: Emil Cioran


When a good writer is having fun, the audience is almost always having fun too.

STEPHEN KING

Entertainment Weekly, August 17, 2007

Tags: Stephen King


The triumph of the written word is often attained when the writer achieves union and trust with the reader, who then becomes ready to be drawn deep into unfamiliar territory, walking in borrowed literary shoes so to speak, toward a deeper understanding of self or society, or of foreign peoples, cultures, and situations.

CHINUA ACHEBE

There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra


I never had a plan, except to write. I love what I do, and have from the beginning. Loving what you do makes it a lot easier to work, every day, to face the tough spots and heel in for the long haul. Nothing against plans; they work for some people. But for me, if I'd been planning, worrying about numbers, trying to micro-manage my career, I wouldn't have focused on the writing. If you don't write, you're not read. If you're not read, you don't sell. So that's my Master Plan, I guess. Write the books, let the agent agent, the editor edit, the publisher publish.

NORA ROBERTS

interview, inReads, October 5, 2011


A man always writes absolutely well whenever he writes in his own manner, but the wigmaker who tries to write like Gellert ... writes badly.

GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG

"Notebook B", The Waste Books

Tags: Georg Christoph Lichtenberg


A great writer has a high respect for values. His essential function is to raise life to the dignity of thought, and this he does by giving it a shape.

ANDRÉ MAUROIS

The Art of Writing

Tags: André Maurois


Writing is -- at least for me -- movement forward, the conquest of a body that I do not know at all, away from something to something that I do not yet know; I never know what will happen -- and here 'happen' is not intended as plot resolution, in the sense of classical dramaturgy, but in the sense of a complicated and complex experiment that with given imaginary, spiritual, intellectual and sensual materials in interaction strives -- on paper to boot! -- towards incarnation.

HEINRICH BÖLL

Nobel Lecture, May 2, 1973