quotations about writing
I made up my mind long ago to follow one cardinal rule in all my writing -- to be clear. I have given up all thought of writing poetically or symbolically or experimentally, or in any of the other modes that might (if I were good enough) get me a Pulitzer prize. I would write merely clearly and in this way establish a warm relationship between myself and my readers, and the professional critics -- Well, they can do whatever they wish.
ISAAC ASIMOV
introduction, Nemesis
What bothers most critics of my work is the goofiness. One reviewer said I need to make up my mind if want to be funny or serious. My response is that I will make up my mind when God does, because life is a commingling of the sacred and the profane, good and evil. To try and separate them is fallacy.
TOM ROBBINS
"In the Creative Process with Tom Robbins; Perfect Sentences, Imperfect Universe", New York Times, December 30, 1993
There is absolutely everything in great fiction but a clear answer.
EUDORA WELTY
On Writing
The greater the length, the more beautiful will the piece be by reason of its size, provided that the whole be perspicuous.
ARISTOTLE
Poetics
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
Write. Don't talk about writing. Don't tell me about your wonderful story ideas. Don't give me a bunch of "somedays." Plant your ass and scribble, type, keyboard. If you have any talent at all, it will leak out despite your failure to pay attention in English.
GLEN COOK
interview, SF Site, September 2005
I'm sympathetic with new writers who focus so much on the beginning. That's what you show friends or beta readers to see if you are just wasting your time or if there's something there. But you won't really know until you finish the whole book.
JEFF ABBOTT
"Rules of Fiction with Jeff Abbott", Suspense Magazine, January 19, 2017
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
Any writer, in whatever form, must first pass through the stage of being a reader. It is unimaginable that someone could become a writer without first being a reader. Only a daydreamer who had fallen into an unhealthy idealism could exoticize a writer in this way. Such misperception is similar to believing that thought is possible without language.
KOBO ABE
The Frontier Within
Wearing down seven number-two pencils is a good day's work.
ERNEST HEMINGWAY
The Paris Review, spring 1958
I realized that I wanted to be a writer. But I wasn't sure I would be until I was fifteen or so. At that time I had immodestly started sending stories to magazines and literary quarterlies. Of course no writer ever forgets his first acceptance; but one fine day when I was seventeen, I had my first, second, and third, all in the same morning's mail. Oh, I'm here to tell you, dizzy with excitement is no mere phrase!
TRUMAN CAPOTE
The Paris Review, spring-summer 1957
What you're trying to do when you write is to crowd the reader out of his own space and occupy it with yours, in a good cause. You're trying to take over his sensibility and deliver an experience that moves from mere information.
ROBERT STONE
The Paris Review, winter 1985
It's a principle of mine to come into the story as late as possible, and to tell it as fast as you can.
JOHN LE CARRÉ
interview, The Paris Review, summer 1997
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
In the mental disturbance and effort of writing, what sustains you is the certainty that on every page there is something left unsaid.
CESARE PAVESE
This Business of Living, May 4, 1942
The world is a hellish place, and bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering. It cheapens and degrades the human experience, when it should inspire and elevate.
TOM WAITS
"Strange Innocence", Vanity Fair, July 2001
The most common human act that writing a novel resembles is lying. The working novelist lies daily, very complexly, and at great length.
WILLIAM GIBSON
Twitter post, May 31, 2009
I would quit while you're ahead. Really, it's an awful field. Just torture. Awful. You write and write, and you have to throw almost all of it away because it's not any good. I would say just stop now. You don't want to do this to yourself. That's my advice to you.
PHILIP ROTH
advice to a young writer, "Writer meets Roth", New York writer Julian Tepper's blog
True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
As those move easiest who have learn'd to dance.
ALEXANDER POPE
An Essay on Criticism
Storytellers are a threat. They threaten all champions of control, they frighten usurpers of the right-to-freedom of the human spirit -- in state, in church or mosque, in party congress, in the university or wherever.
CHINUA ACHEBE
Anthills of the Savannah