WRITING QUOTES XVIII

quotations about writing

Everybody writes a book too many.

MORDECAI RICHLER

"Sayings of the Week", The Observor, January 9, 1985

Tags: Mordecai Richler


Writers aren't people exactly. Or, if they're any good, they're a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person. It's like actors, who try so pathetically not to look in mirrors. Who lean backward trying--only to see their faces in the reflecting chandeliers.

F. SCOTT FITZGERALD

The Last Tycoon

Tags: F. Scott Fitzgerald


You will always have days when you feel like an amateur. When it feels like everybody else is better than you. You will have this nagging suspicion that someone will eventually find you out, call you on your bullshit, realize you're the literary equivalent of a vagrant painting on the side of a wall with a piece of calcified poop. You will have days when the blank page is like being lost in a blizzard. You will sometimes hate what you wrote today, yesterday, or ten years ago. Bad days are part of the package. You just have to shut them out, swaddle your head in tinfoil, and keep writing anyway.

CHUCK WENDIG

The Kick-Ass Writer

Tags: Chuck Wendig


Everybody can write; writers can't do anything else.

MIGNON MCLAUGHLIN

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook

Tags: Mignon McLaughlin


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

Tags: Antonin Artaud


You keep working on your piece over and over, trying to get the sections and paragraphs and sentences and the whole just right, but there's a point at which you can tell you've begun hurting the work with your perfectionism. Then you have to release the work to new eyes.

ANNE LAMOTT

"Q&A: Anne Lamott", San Diego Magazine, January 27, 2014

Tags: Anne Lamott


If you over-plot your book you strangle your characters. Your characters have to have enough freedom and life to be able to surprise you.

ALAN LIGHTMAN

interview, Identity Theory, November 16, 2000

Tags: Alan Lightman


As things stand now, I am going to be a writer. I'm not sure that I'm going to be a good one or even a self-supporting one, but until the dark thumb of fate presses me to the dust and says "you are nothing," I will be a writer.

HUNTER S. THOMPSON

Gonzo


Writers cannot let themselves be servants of the official mythology. They have to, whatever the cost, say what truth they have to say.

TOBIAS WOLFF

Continuum, summer 1998

Tags: Tobias Wolff


The life of a writer is absolute hell ... if he is a writer of fiction he lives in a world of fear. Each new day demands new ideas and he can never be sure whether he is going to come up with them or not.

ROALD DAHL

Boy

Tags: Roald Dahl


I gotta pound the keys for the ideas to flow.

KIRBY LARSON

interview, Author Turf, March 6, 2014

Tags: Kirby Larson


When I am asked how or why I wrote this or that, I always find myself quite embarassed. I would gladly furnish not merely the questioner, but myself as well, with an exhaustive answer, but can never do so. I cannot recreate the context in its entirety, yet I wish that I could, so that at least the literature I myself make might be made slightly less of a mysterious process than bridge-building and bread-baking.

HEINRICH BÖLL

Nobel Lecture, May 2, 1973

Tags: Heinrich Böll


When I write I don't aim to shock people, and I'm surprised when I do. But I don't think that anything that occurs in life should be omitted from art, though the artist should present it in a fashion that is artistic and not ugly. I set out to tell the truth. And sometimes the truth is shocking.

TENNESSEE WILLIAMS

The Paris Review, fall 1981


I think a writer's job is to provoke questions. I like to think that if someone's read a book of mine, they've had--I don't know what--the literary equivalent of a shower. Something that would start them thinking in a slightly different way perhaps. That's what I think writers are for. This is what our function is.

DORIS LESSING

The Paris Review, spring 1988


Getting even is one great reason for writing.... But getting even isn't necessarily vicious. There are two ways of getting even: one is destructive and the other is restorative. It depends on how the scales are weighted.

WILLIAM H. GASS

The Paris Review, summer 1977


So nothing will ever be written down again. Perhaps the act of writing is necessary only when nothing happens.

KOBO ABE

The Face of Another

Tags: Kobo Abe


To refer even in passing to unpublished or struggling authors and their problems is to put oneself at some risk, so I will say here and now that any unsolicited manuscripts or typescripts sent to me will be destroyed unread. You must make your way yourself. Why you should be so set on the nearly always disappointing profession is a puzzling question.

KINGSLEY AMIS

The Amis Collection: Selected Non-fiction

Tags: Kingsley Amis


The man, the writer, the instrument of the creation will die, but his creation does not die.

LUIGI PIRANDELLO

Six Characters in Search of an Author

Tags: Luigi Pirandello


Only the hunger for something beyond the personal will allow a writer to break free of one major obstacle to originality -- the fear of self-revelation.

JANE HIRSHFIELD

Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry

Tags: Jane Hirshfield


If a high quality of writing is to occur, it is reasonable to acknowledge that an open mind and a critical ear are essential tools that are used during all phases of revision.

GARRETT SAYERS

"Reading Aloud Is Essential to Quality Writing", Liberty Voice, January 31, 2016