quotations about writing
There is no way of writing well and also of writing easily.
ANTHONY TROLLOPE
Barchester Towers
Nowadays three witty turns of phrase and a lie make a writer.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG
"Notebook D", Aphorisms
An author in his book must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
letter to Madame Louise Colet, December 9, 1852
The most common human act that writing a novel resembles is lying. The working novelist lies daily, very complexly, and at great length.
WILLIAM GIBSON
Twitter post, May 31, 2009
Few sensible authors are happy discussing the creative process -- it is, after all, black magic, and may lose its power if we look that particular gift horse too closely in the mouth.
EDWARD ALBEE
introduction, Three Tall Women
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
After you have written a thing and you reread it, there is always the temptation to fix it up, to improve it, to remove its poison, blunt its sting.
JEAN COCTEAU
The Paris Review, summer-fall, 1964
Without a pen in my hand I can't think.
JOHN LE CARRÉ
interview, The Paris Review, summer 1997
You have an idea in mind of what you want to achieve when you sit down to write something. It takes many years to accept that you will always fall short of that. Maybe now I can write the book that I might have had in mind five or twenty years ago. You're always lagging behind your best ideas.
TOBIAS WOLFF
The Missouri Review, 2003
Genre categories are irrelevant. I dislike them, but I do not have the casting vote. Writing is writing and stories are stories. Perhaps the only true genres are fiction and non-fiction. And even there, who can be sure?
TANITH LEE
Tabula Rasa, October 1994
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
What bothers most critics of my work is the goofiness. One reviewer said I need to make up my mind if want to be funny or serious. My response is that I will make up my mind when God does, because life is a commingling of the sacred and the profane, good and evil. To try and separate them is fallacy.
TOM ROBBINS
"In the Creative Process with Tom Robbins; Perfect Sentences, Imperfect Universe", New York Times, December 30, 1993
In the end, the writer is not even allowed to live in his writing.
THEODOR W. ADORNO
Minima Moralia
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
Gotta have a head like a wrecking ball, a spirit like one of them punching clown dummies that always weeble-wobbles back up to standing. This takes time. Stories need to find the right home, the right audience. Stick with it. Quitting is for sad pandas.
CHUCK WENDIG
250 Things You Should Know About Writing
Everything you look at can be turned into a story ... you can make a tale of everything you touch.
HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN
"The Elder Tree Mother"
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
Well, there are certain stock words that I have found myself using a great deal. When I become aware of them, it is an alarm signal meaning I am falling back on something that has served in the past--it is a sign of not thinking at the present moment, not that there is anything intrinsically bad about certain words or phrases.
JOHN ASHBERY
interview, The Paris Review, winter 1983
The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof, shit detector. This is the writer's radar and all great writers have had it.
ERNEST HEMINGWAY
Paris Review, spring 1958
Madness is terrific I can assure you, and not to be sniffed at; and in its lava I still find most of the things I write about. It shoots out of one everything shaped, final, not in mere driblets, as sanity does.
VIRGINIA WOOLF
Letters