WRITING QUOTES XXIV

quotations about writing

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


I'm pretty obsessive-compulsive and I'm very fast. I tend to not write for a long period of time until I can't not write, and then I write first drafts in gallops. I won't eat right. I forget to do my laundry. I have a dog now, and I have to remember to walk him. When I write, that takes over and I can't do anything else. There's something exciting about that free fall, but then my life gets really screwed up. I've lost lots of relationships because of my having to ignore everything.

ADAM RAPP

interview, Theatre Communications Group

Tags: Adam Rapp


The role of the writer is not to say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say. Most of the writing today which is called fiction contains such a poverty of language, such triteness, that it is a shrunken, diminished world we enter, poorer and more formless than the poorest cripple deprived of ears and eyes and tongue. The writer's responsibility is to increase, develop our senses, expand our vision, heighten our awareness and enrich our articulateness.

ANAÏS NIN

The Diary of Anaïs Nin


Any writer of any worth at all hopes to play only a pocket-torch of light -- and rarely, through genius, a sudden flambeau -- into the bloody yet beautiful labyrinth of human experience, of being.

NADINE GORDIMER

Nobel Lecture, December 7, 1991

Tags: Nadine Gordimer


Writing is an act of blind faith that out there, somewhere, someone will read and enjoy, understand.

JAMES V. SCHALL

"The Creative Catholic: Fr. James V. Schall S.J. on the art and vocation of writing", Catholic World Report, March 27, 2017


There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.

W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

attributed, Literary Agents: How to Get & Work with the Right One for You

Tags: W. Somerset Maugham


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


I want to do something splendid ... something heroic or wonderful that won't be forgotten after I'm dead ... I think I shall write books.

LOUISA MAY ALCOTT

Little Women

Tags: Louisa May Alcott


After being turned down by numerous publishers, he decided to write for posterity.

GEORGE ADE

"The Fable of the Bohemian Who Had Hard Luck", Fables in Slang

Tags: George Ade


Writing is a conversation, to me. The best kind. You can't get interrupted.

GERALD ASHER

speech at the Symposium for Professional Wine Writers, February 2011

Tags: Gerald Asher


Nothing is more clear than that every plot, worth the name, must be elaborated to its dénouement before any thing be attempted with the pen. It is only with the dénouement constantly in view that we can give a plot its indispensable air of consequence, or causation, by making the incidents, and especially the tone at all points, tend to the development of the intention.

EDGAR ALLAN POE

"The Philosophy of Composition"

Tags: Edgar Allan Poe


What I cannot thus eliminate, what I must, head down, eyes shut, with the courage of a battalion and the blindness of a bull, charge and disperse are, indubitably, the figures behind the ferns, commercial travellers. There I've hidden them all this time in the hope that somehow they'd disappear, or better still emerge, as indeed they must, if the story's to go on gathering richness and rotundity, destiny and tragedy, as stories should, rolling along with it two, if not three, commercial travellers and a whole grove of aspidistra.

VIRGINIA WOOLF

"An Unfinished Novel", The Complete Shorter Fiction of Virginia Woolf

Tags: Virginia Woolf


In the very act of writing I felt pleased with what I did. There was the pleasure of having words come to me, and the pleasure of ordering them, re-ordering them, weighing one against another. Pleasure also in the imagination of the story, the feeling that it could mean something. Mostly I was glad to find out that I could write at all. In writing you work toward a result you won't see for years, and can't be sure you'll ever see. It takes stamina and self-mastery and faith. It demands those things of you, then gives them back with a little extra, a surprise to keep you coming. It toughens you and clears your head. I could feel it happening. I was saving my life with every word I wrote, and I knew it.

TOBIAS WOLFF

In Pharaoh's Army


What writers do is they tell their own story constantly through other people's stories. They imagine other people, and those other people are carrying the burden of their struggles, their questions about themselves.

TOBIAS WOLFF

Fiction Writers Review, April 5, 2009

Tags: Tobias Wolff


It was then that I saw the business of writing for what it truly was and is to me. It is your penance for not being lucky. It is an attempt to reach others and to make them love you. It is your instinctive protest, when you find you have no voice at the world's tribunals, and that no one will speak for you. I would give my entire output of words, past, present and to come, in exchange for easier access to the world, for permission to state "I hurt" or "I hate" or "I want". Or indeed, "Look at me". And I do not go back on this. For once a thing is known it can never be unknown. It can only be forgotten. And writing is the enemy of forgetfulness, or thoughtlessness. For the writer there is no oblivion. Only endless memory.

ANITA BROOKNER

Look at Me


The thing to remember when you're writing is, it's not whether or not what you put on paper is true. It's whether it wakes a truth in your reader.

CHARLES DE LINT

The Blue Girl

Tags: Charles de Lint


My plots are always rudimentary. Whatever I've accomplished certainly does not depend on my virtuosity with plot. Generally I don't even have a plot. What happens is that my characters engage in an action, and out of that action little bits of plot sometimes adhere to the narrative. I never have to worry about lifting a plot, because I don't conceive of a book that way.

NORMAN MAILER

The Paris Review, winter-spring 1964


The moment comes when a character does or says something you hadn't thought about. At that moment he's alive and you leave it to him.

GRAHAM GREENE

New York Times, October 9, 1985


I don't believe in the notion that some characters have lives of their own and the author follows after them. The author has to be careful not to force the character to do something that would go against the logic of that character's personality, but the character does not have independence. The character is trapped in the author's hand, in my hand, but he is trapped in a way he does not know he is trapped. The characters are on strings, but the strings are loose; the characters enjoy the illusion of freedom, of independence, but they cannot go where I do not want them to go. When that happens, the author must pull on the string and say to them, I am in charge here.

JOSÉ SARAMAGO

The Paris Review, winter 1998

Tags: José Saramago


The process of creating is related to the process of dreaming although when you are writing you're doing it and when you're dreaming, it's doing you.

ROBERT STONE

attributed, A Writer's Book of Days