WRITING QUOTES XIV

quotations about writing

I have feelings, but my pen cannot and will not write feelings; nay, my heart has no mind that can coin them into words.

LYMAN ABBOTT

Reminiscences

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Writing, in war and in peace, is the same thing. The only difference is how you view yourself.... Mass death, revolutions and history make you reconsider things.

KHALED KHALIFA

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


It's very unlikely that a writer is going to make a living by writing. So then the question is: how do you balance work, life, and writing? If you find out, please tell me.

KELLY LINK

interview, Apex Magazine, July 2, 2013

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Fictional characters are made of words, not flesh; they do not have free will, they do not exercise volition. They are easily born, and as easily killed off.

JOHN BANVILLE

attributed, Irish Writers and Their Creative Process


I, even now, persist in believing that these black marks on white paper bear the greatest significance, that if I keep writing I might be able to catch the rainbow of consciousness in a jar.

JEFFREY EUGENIDES

Middlesex

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I wrote without much effort; for I was rich, and the rich are always respectable, whatever be their style of writing.

JANE AUSTEN

letter to Cassandra Austen, June 20, 1808

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A lot of novelists start late--Conrad, Pirandello, even Mark Twain. When you're young, chess is all right, and music and poetry. But novel-writing is something else. It has to be learned, but it can't be taught. This bunkum and stinkum of college creative writing courses! The academics don't know that the only thing you can do for someone who wants to write is to buy him a typewriter.

JAMES M. CAIN

The Paris Review, spring-summer 1978

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A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment from which to look back or from which to look ahead.

GRAHAM GREENE

The End of the Affair

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How hard is the destiny of a maker of books! He has to cut and sew up in order to make ideas follow logically. But when one writes a book on reverie, has the time not come to let the pen run, to let reverie speak, and better yet to dream the reverie at the same time one believes he is transcribing it?

GASTON BACHELARD

The Poetics of Reverie: Childhood, Language, and the Cosmos

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He that writes to himself, writes to an eternal public.

ELIZA COOK

Diamond Dust

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Good writers define reality; bad ones merely restate it.

EDWARD ALBEE

Saturday Review, May 4, 1966


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

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Hate the autocracy of the kept gates all you like, but the forge of rejection purifies us (provided it doesn't burn us down to a fluffy pile of cinder). The writer learns so much from rejection about himself, his work, the market, the business. Even authors who choose to self-publish should, from time to time, submit themselves to the scraping talons and biting beaks of the raptors of rejection. Writers who have never experienced rejection are no different than children who get awards for everything they do: they have already found themselves tap-dancing at the top of the "I'm-So-Special" mountain, never having to climb through snow and karate chop leopards to get there.

CHUCK WENDIG

"25 Things Writers Should Know About Rejection", Terrible Minds


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

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For me, everyone I write of is real. I have little true say in what they want, what they do or end up as (or in). Their acts appall, enchant, disgust or astound me. Their ends fill me with retributive glee, or break my heart. I can only take credit (if I can even take credit for that) in reporting the scenario. This is not a disclaimer. Just a fact.

TANITH LEE

interview, Innsmouth Free Press, November 17, 2009


After a while the business end of writing takes too much of the writing time. Better to pay someone ten percent and find that you're still more than ten percent ahead in the end. Which is true. My present agent says that he always feels that a good agent during the course of a year should earn back for his client at least the ten percent he takes by way of commission, so the client's really nothing out. And what he should ideally do is make him more money than the ten percent.

ROGER ZELAZNY

interview, Phlogiston, 1995

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Good fiction creates its own reality.

NORA ROBERTS

The Stanislaski Brothers


Everybody writes a book too many.

MORDECAI RICHLER

"Sayings of the Week", The Observor, January 9, 1985

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You know nobody's ever going to see the stuff, but you have to write through it. You're just trying to satisfy some grim, barren mandate. There's probably a German word for that.

JOHN JEREMIAH SULLIVAN

The Paris Review, winter 2012


I like to write. Sometimes I'm afraid that I like it too much because when I get into work I don't want to leave it. As a result I'll go for days and days without leaving the house or wherever I happen to be. I'll go out long enough to get papers and pick up some food and that's it. It's strange, but instead of hating writing I love it too much.

HARPER LEE

interview with Roy Newquist, Counterpoints, 1964

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