WRITING QUOTES XXXI

quotations about writing

The right story needs the right telling.

JOHN GREEN

interview, Chicago Public Library


There are two kinds of characters in all fiction, the born and the synthetic. If the writer has to ask himself questions -- is he tall, is he short? -- he had better quit.

REX STOUT

The New York Times, November 15, 1953


Writing in the first person can be claustrophobic--everything that happens in the book is notionally filtered through the narrator, and one can long for the fresh air of another perspective. One can luxuriate in the peculiar world of a character, but there are limitations. Ironizing that person's experience is difficult. You need perhaps a candid old friend of the narrator who can tell a few truths the narrator prefers to ignore.

ALAN HOLLINGHURST

The Paris Review, winter 2011

Tags: Alan Hollinghurst


You become a serious novelist by living long enough.

DON DELILLO

Conversations with Don DeLillo

Tags: Don DeLillo


As we understand it, the surest way to make a living by the pen is to raise pigs.

ROBERT ELLIOTT GONZALES

Poems and Paragraphs

Tags: Robert Elliott Gonzales


Fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners. Often the attachment is scarcely perceptible; Shakespeare's plays, for instance, seem to hang there complete by themselves. But when the web is pulled askew, hooked up at the edge, torn in the middle, one remembers that these webs are not spun in midair by incorporeal creatures, but are the work of suffering human beings, and are attached to the grossly material things, like health and money and the houses we live in.

VIRGINIA WOOLF

A Room of One's Own

Tags: Virginia Woolf


He was one of those poets who escaped the terrors of writing by writing all the time.

JAMES BALDWIN

Another Country

Tags: James Baldwin


I truly believe that writing is a continuum--so the different genres and forms are simply stops along the same continuum. Different ideas that need to be expressed sometimes require different forms for the ideas to float better.

CHRIS ABANI

interview, UTNE Reader, June 2010

Tags: Chris Abani


In the writing process, the more the story cooks, the better. The brain works for you even when you are at rest. I find dreams particularly useful. I myself think a great deal before I go to sleep and the details sometimes unfold in the dream.

DORIS LESSING

The New York Times, April 22, 1984


The artist deals with what cannot be said in words. The artist whose medium is fiction does this in words. The novelist says in words what cannot be said in words.

URSULA K. LE GUIN

introduction, The Left Hand of Darkness

Tags: Ursula K. Le Guin


True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
As those move easiest who have learn'd to dance.

ALEXANDER POPE

An Essay on Criticism

Tags: Alexander Pope


Writing is a tough thing and you only get better with practice. Just like free throws.

NICK WESTFALL

"Man writes directorial debut movie 'Finding Home'", myfox8, March 30, 2017


Writing is always a rough translation from wordlessness into words.

CHARLES SIMIC

attributed, Stealing Glimpses: Of Poetry, Poets, and Things in Between


[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


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


I would be a liar, a hypocrite, or a fool--and I'm not any of those--to say that I don't write for the reader. I do. But for the reader who hears, who really will work at it, going behind what I seem to say. So I write for myself and that reader who will pay the dues.

MAYA ANGELOU

The Paris Review, fall 1990


No reason at all why one should go on writing just for the sake of it. I think it is very important to stop when you haven't got anything to say.

JULIAN BARNES

The Paris Review, winter 2000


The humorous story is told gravely; the teller does his best to conceal the fact that he even dimly suspects that there is anything funny about it.

MARK TWAIN

"How to Tell a Story"

Tags: Mark Twain


What people who don't write don't understand is that they think you make up the line consciously -- but you don't. It proceeds from your unconscious. So it's the same surprise to you when it emerges as it is to the audience when the comic says it. I don't think of the joke and then say it. I say it and then realize what I've said. And I laugh at it, because I'm hearing it for the first time myself.

WOODY ALLEN

Esquire, September 2013

Tags: Woody Allen


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