WRITING QUOTES XXVIII

quotations about writing

The publishers want series, obviously. Originally, they wanted me to do the Garrett series along with another similar series, so it would be one book every six months. Eventually I'd just do the outlines and they'd get some poor unknown author to flesh out the stories. That's why you see so many books by a famous author and an unknown. You can make half the money basically by selling your name. The thing is, once your name is on enough bad books, maybe it isn't worth all that much any more.

GLEN COOK

interview, Quantum Muse


Writing is a solitary pursuit and I think you have to be partially at peace with yourself, but it's the other part that's usually producing the stuff worth reading.

CRAIG JOHNSON

"A Conversation with Craig Johnson", The Cold Dish

Tags: Craig Johnson


I can't understand why a person will take a year or two to write a novel when he can easily buy one for a few dollars.

FRED ALLEN

attributed, Books: Their History, Art, Power, Glory, Infamy and Suffering According to Their Creators, Friends and Enemies

Tags: Fred Allen


As a writer I want everybody to get a chance to voice their opinions. If each character thinks that they're telling the truth, then it's valid. Then at the end of the film, I leave it up to the audience to decide who did the right thing.

SPIKE LEE

"Fight the Power: Spike Lee on Do the Right Thing", Rolling Stone, June 20, 2014

Tags: Spike Lee


The reason why so few good books are written is, that so few people who can write know anything. In general an author has always lived in a room, has read books, has cultivated science, is acquainted with the style and sentiments of the best authors, but he is out of the way of employing his own eyes and ears. He has nothing to hear and nothing to see. His life is a vacuum.

WALTER BAGEHOT

Shakespeare: The Man

Tags: Walter Bagehot


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

Tags: James Baldwin


Writing the first chapter can feel like you're trying to artificially inseminate a stampeding mastodon with one hand duct taped to your leg. That's okay. That's normal. Do it and get through it.

CHUCK WENDIG

"25 Things to Know about Writing the First Chapter of Your Novel", Terrible Minds

Tags: Chuck Wendig


You simply keep putting down one damn word after the other, as you hear them, as they come to you. You can either set brick as a laborer or as an artist.

ANNE LAMOTT

Bird by Bird

Tags: Anne Lamott


Pay attention only to the form; emotion will come spontaneously to inhabit it. A perfect dwelling always finds an inhabitant. The artist's business is to build the dwelling; as for the inhabitant, it is up to the reader to provide him.

ANDRE GIDE

Pretexts: Reflections on Literature and Morality

Tags: André Gide


I've always considered writing the most hateful kind of work. I suspect it's a bit like f***ing -- which is fun only for amateurs. Old whores don't do much giggling.

HUNTER S. THOMPSON

The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time

Tags: Hunter S. Thompson


I've increasingly been interested in leaving gaps and unresolved elements within a novel, trying to escape from the model of the novel as something in which there is a secret that, when revealed, will make all clear. It seems to me too unlike life, too convenient, too fictional.

ALAN HOLLINGHURST

The Paris Review, winter 2011


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 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


Some writers, of course, simply write, as they feel they are driven to do, by outer/inner inspirations. If, after the work is written and, hopefully, published, others respond -- that is the Champagne. But we, or some of us, don't write for the Champagne. We write because we write.

TANITH LEE

interview, Intergalactic Medicine Show

Tags: Tanith Lee


Trouble not thyself about the fate of thy writings: if what thou hast writ be worth preserving, no flood, however mighty, can sweep it away; if it be worthless, no ink, however prepared, can make it indelible.

IVAN PANIN

Thoughts

Tags: Ivan Panin


A writer can be compared to a well. There are as many kinds of wells as there are writers. The important thing is to have good water in the well, and it is better to take a regular amount out than to pump the well dry and wait for it to refill.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY

The Paris Review, spring 1958


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


In utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable.

JOHN STEINBECK

New York Times, June 2, 1969


[Writing is] hostile in that you're trying to make somebody see something the way you see it, trying to impose your idea, your picture. It's hostile to try to wrench around someone else's mind that way. Quite often you want to tell somebody your dream, your nightmare. Well, nobody wants to hear about someone else's dream, good or bad; nobody wants to walk around with it. The writer is always tricking the reader into listening to the dream.

JOAN DIDION

The Paris Review, fall-winter 1978


Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.

CYRIL CONNOLLY

The New Statesman, February 25, 1933