WRITING QUOTES XII

quotations about writing

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


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

Tags: James M. Cain


Write only of what is important and eternal.

ANTON CHEKHOV

The Seagull


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


Usually, you don't know where a book comes from ... it's just there, some kind of an itch that you can't quite scratch.

CORMAC MCCARTHY

interview with Oprah Winfrey, June 1, 2008

Tags: Cormac McCarthy


The writer operates at a peculiar crossroads where time and place and eternity somehow meet. His problem is to find that location.

FLANNERY O'CONNOR

Mystery and Manners


The writer is often faced with two choices--turn away from the reality of life's intimidating complexity or conquer its mystery by battling with it. The writer who chooses the former soon runs out of energy and produces elegantly tired fiction.

CHINUA ACHEBE

There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra


The text you write must prove to me that it desires me.

ROLAND BARTHES

The Pleasures of the Text


The business of a novelist is, in my opinion, to create characters first and foremost, and then to set them in the snarl of the human currents of his time, so that there results an accurate permanent record of a phase of history.

JOHN DOS PASSOS

"The Business of a Novelist"


My two fingers on a typewriter have never connected with my brain. My hand on a pen does. A fountain pen, of course. Ball-point pens are only good for filling out forms on a plane.

GRAHAM GREENE

International Herald Tribune, October 7, 1977


My job is not to try to give readers what they want but to try to make readers want what I give.

CHINA MIÉVILLE

The Guardian, September 20, 2012


My gratitude for good writing is unbounded; I'm grateful for it the way I'm grateful for the ocean.

ANNE LAMOTT

Bird by Bird

Tags: Anne Lamott


Maybe everyone does have a novel in them, perhaps even a great one. I don't believe it, but for the purposes of this argument, let's say it's so. Only a few of us are going to be willing to break our own hearts by trading in the living beauty of imagination for the stark disappointment of words. This is why we type a line or two and then hit the delete button or crumple up the page. Certainly that was not what I meant to say! That does not represent what I see. Maybe I should try again another time. Maybe the muse has stepped out back for a smoke. Maybe I have writer's block. Maybe I'm an idiot and was never meant to write at all.

ANN PATCHETT

The Getaway Car


If there is a special Hell for writers it would be in the forced contemplation of their own works.

JOHN DOS PASSOS

New York Times, October 25, 1959

Tags: John Dos Passos


I find writing extremely difficult. I usually have to drag myself to my desk, mainly because I doubt myself. And it's getting harder because I want to improve with every book. Sometimes I guess it's best just to forget there's an audience and just write like no one will ever read it at all.

MARKUS ZUSAK

"Why I Write", The Guardian, March 28, 2008


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


Writing can wreck your body. You sit there on the chair hour after hour and sweat your guts out to get a few words.

NORMAN MAILER

The New York Times, October 4, 2000


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

HILAIRE BELLOC

The Path to Rome

Tags: Hilaire Belloc


Whether 10 or 1,000 people are listening is irrelevant. Writing is an investment in your future and your potential.

BIANCA BASS

"Why You Should Write (Even If It Feels Like Nobody Is Listening)", Huffington Post, February 29, 2016


When we attempt to articulate our tender feelings in writing, we enter an inner dialogue of self-exploration: we forage for the more precise word, the more resonant phrasing. If the writing is done with particular care and attention, there is a Goldilocks quality to it: We rustle through an assortment of terms, discarding one, perhaps as "too weak" or another "too ordinary" until we settle upon the one that is "just right". In doing so, we have discovered something about ourselves.

DANIEL GRIFFIN

"Don't Tell Him You Love Him... Put It in Writing", Huffington Post, February 15, 2016