quotations about writing
A novel is balanced between a few true impressions and the multitude of false ones that make up most of what we call life.
SAUL BELLOW
Nobel lecture, December 12, 1976
I don't like to write from a flat, cold position. You must like what you're doing very much or like the people -- either like them or hate them. You can't be indifferent.
SAUL BELLOW
Q & A at Howard Community College, February 1986
I don't think I'm cut out for a job where you have to look professionally tidy. I prefer working in my pajamas and taking showers after lunch.
KELLY LINK
"Words by Flashlight", Sybil's Garage, June 7, 2006
Brevity is the sister of talent.
ANTON CHEKHOV
letter to A. P. Chekhov, April 11, 1889
One writes out of one thing only--one's own experience. Everything depends on how relentlessly one forces from this experience the last drop, sweet or bitter, it can possibly give.
JAMES BALDWIN
Notes of a Native Son
Writing sets off a spark in my heart, and I'm going to start a fire.
TIFFANY FERENTINI
"Millennial Writers on Writing", Huffington Post, February 16, 2016
Beginning a book is unpleasant. I'm entirely uncertain about the character and the predicament, and a character in his predicament is what I have to begin with. Worse than not knowing your subject is not knowing how to treat it, because that's finally everything. I type out beginnings and they're awful, more of an unconscious parody of my previous book than the breakaway from it that I want. I need something driving down the center of a book, a magnet to draw everything to it--that's what I look for during the first months of writing something new. I often have to write a hundred pages or more before there's a paragraph that's alive. Okay, I say to myself, that's your beginning, start there; that's the first paragraph of the book.
PHILIP ROTH
Paris Review, fall 1984
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
Fundamentally, all writing is about the same thing. It's about dying, about the brief flicker of time we have here, and the frustration it creates.
MORDECAI RICHLER
attributed, Mordecai & Me
I have no pleasure in writing myself--none, in the mere act--though all pleasure in the sense of fulfilling a duty, whence, if I have done my real best, judge how heart-breaking a matter must it be to be pronounced a poor creature by critic this and acquaintance the other.
ROBERT BROWNING
letter to Elizabeth Barrett, March 12, 1845
I've got splinters in my nose from the best publishing doors in town.
RITA MAE BROWN
interview, Time, March 18, 2008
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
Go to any lengths to avoid preachiness! If you have to choose between the message and the story, always choose the story.
ELIZABETH ZELVIN
interview, The Fix
In utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable.
JOHN STEINBECK
New York Times, June 2, 1969
I can't write five words but that I change seven.
DOROTHY PARKER
The Paris Review, summer 1956
The true alchemists do not change lead into gold; they change the world into words.
WILLIAM H. GASS
A Temple of Texts
I've heard writers talk about "discovering a voice," but for me that wasn't a problem. There were so many voices that I didn't know where to start.
SAM SHEPARD
The Paris Review
He was one of those poets who escaped the terrors of writing by writing all the time.
JAMES BALDWIN
Another Country
Getting out of bed of a morning has never been a problem, but I've noticed of late that my writing is better in the afternoon. The mornings are methodical, when all the blockwork and first-fix stuff takes place. The ornamentation or even de-ornamentation -- the things that separate writing from writing -- don't seem possible until later in the day, when I've established some perspective.
SIMON ARMITAGE
"Language is my enemy -- I spend my life battling with it", The Guardian, March 25, 2017
Writing is a tough thing and you only get better with practice. Just like free throws.
NICK WESTFALL
"Man writes directorial debut movie 'Finding Home'", myfox8, March 30, 2017