WRITING QUOTES XVI

quotations about writing

I write because I hate. A lot. Hard.

WILLIAM H. GASS

The Paris Review, summer 1977

Tags: William H. Gass


The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.

ALBERT CAMUS

attributed, 2012: Waking of the Prophets

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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


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


Writing is creative, which is right brain activity. Editing is rational, logical and process/rule driven, which is left-brain activity. It seems that, if you switch consistently between the two, the creative process becomes derailed by all the rules and forms. You scare it back into the shadows.

DAVID CHISLETT

"Editing Is Not Writing", Books LIVE, February 12, 2016


I believe so. In its beginning, dialogue's the easiest thing in the world to write when you have a good ear, which I think I have. But as it goes on, it's the most difficult, because it has so many ways to function. Sometimes I needed to make a speech do three or four or five things at once--reveal what the character said but also what he thought he said, what he hid, what others were going to think he meant, and what they misunderstood, and so forth--all in his single speech. And the speech would have to keep the essence of this one character, his whole particular outlook in concentrated form. This isn't to say I succeeded. But I guess it explains why dialogue gives me my greatest pleasure in writing.

EUDORA WELTY

The Paris Review, fall 1972


Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.

FLANNERY O'CONNOR

attributed, The Book of Poisonous Quotes

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Of all that is written I love only what a man has written with his blood. Write with blood, and you will find that blood is spirit.

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

Thus Spoke Zarathustra

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Yet do not miss the moral, my good men.
For Saint Paul says that all that's written well
Is written down some useful truth to tell.
Then take the wheat and let the chaff lie still.

GEOFFREY CHAUCER

The Canterbury Tales

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He who only writes to suit the taste of the age, considers himself more than his writings. We should always aim at perfection, and then posterity will do us that justice which sometimes our contemporaries refuse us.

JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE

"Of Works of the Mind", Les Caractères

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When it's going well [writing] goes terribly fast. It isn't at all surprising to write a chapter in a day, which for me is about twenty-two pages. When it's going badly, it isn't really going badly; it's just the beginning.

JOHN LE CARRÉ

interview, The Paris Review, summer 1997


Well, I don't ever leave out details, in that I don't come up with information or description which I don't then use. I only ever come up with what seems to me absolutely essential to make the story work. I'm not usually an overwriter. As I revise, it's usually a matter of adding in as much vivid details as seem necessary to make the story come clear without slowing down the momentum of the story.

KELLY LINK

interview, Apex Magazine, July 2, 2013

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Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college.

KURT VONNEGUT

A Man Without a Country


There are only two kinds of books which you can write and be pretty sure you're going to make a living -- cook books and detective stories.

REX STOUT

Royal Decree: Conversations with Rex Stout

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I always have the feeling that I'm never going to be able to write anything funny again. That's why I keep writing funny things. I have to prove to myself that I'm wrong.

RITA RUDNER

interview, Huffington Post, March 18, 2013

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We need the expressive arts, the ancient scribes, the storytellers, the priests. And that's where I put myself: as a storyteller. Not necessarily a high priestess, but certainly the storyteller. And I would love to be the storyteller of the tribe.

TANITH LEE

"Love & Death & Publishers", Locus Magazine, April 1998

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Writing is a job, a talent, but it's also the place to go in your head. It is the imaginary friend you drink your tea with in the afternoon.

ANN PATCHETT

Truth and Beauty

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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

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Write only of what is important and eternal.

ANTON CHEKHOV

The Seagull


All Writing Is Garbage. People who come out of nowhere to try to put into words any part of what goes on in their minds are pigs. The whole literary scene is a pigpen, especially today.

ANTONIN ARTAUD

Selected Writings

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