About Writing Quotes

They had created themselves together, and they always saw themselves, their youth, their love, their lost youth and lost love, their failures and memories, as a sort of living fiction.

I am simply not interested, at this point, in creating narrative scenes between characters.

Writing a story, regardless of length, begins always with a single word.

I wrote a novel because I had a yen to do it. I believe this is sufficient reason to set out to tell a story.

Stay humble as a writer: write on toilet paper.

To care about words, to have a stake in what is written, to believe in the power of books - this overwhelms the rest, and beside it one's life becomes very small.

An author ought to consider himself, not as a gentleman who gives a private or eleemosynary treat, but rather as one who keeps a public ordinary, at which all persons are welcome for their money.

Good writing is always new.

The emotional tone or affect of the tale should be hot and engaged, not remote and dispassionate.

Art and commerce are not irreconciliable, they are inextricably intertwined.

Timmy, who made a daring escape, also made a mistake of paying the taxi driver with a check made out of toilet paper.

Of course, in fairness, I must remind you of this: that we writers are the most lily-livered of all craftsmen. We expect more, for the most peewee efforts, than any other people.

Well, they each seem to do one thing well enough, but fail to realize that literature depends on doing several things well at the same time.

A lack of narrative structure, as you know, will cause anxiety.

Because there are hundreds of different ways to say one thing, I, being a writer, songwriter, and poet, speak childishly and incoherently. In speech there is so much to decide in so little time.

That is the mystery about writing: it comes out of afflictions, out of the gouged times, when the heart is cut open.

Sometimes the body gets out of bed an hour before the brain.

I think part of my purpose in this life is to talk about magic, and to make it.

Writing is a lot like making soup. My subconscious cooks the idea, but I have to sit down at the computer to pour it out.

People talk about books that write themselves, and it's a lie. Books don't write themselves. It takes thought and research and backache and notes and more time and more work than you'd believe.

As a travel writer I've specialized in gritty, fearful destinations, the kind of places that make a reader's hair stick on end.

Writing is the thing that props me up.

My plan is to continue teaching many more years than the 32 years I've already enjoyed and continue writing, and promoting my books and websites if it's God will.

The river was so blue it seemed to be breathing.

When there's music in your soul, there's soul in your music.

Love words, agonize over sentences. And pay attention to the world.

Music is not my life. My life is music.

The thought of writing was always pleasant, but the process was painful

Authors must spend months, years making fantasy believable in a single work while reality runs rampant and complete chaos elsewhere.

The commercial work of today is the classics of tomorrow.

The fictive is an emormous territory it turns out, its boundaries vague, and there is little certainty about where it begins and ends.

Books have a vital place in our culture. They are the source of ideas, of stories that engage and stretch the imagination and most importantly, inspire.

Write about the thing that scares you most or your most private confession and you'll never have a problem coming up with decent fiction.

But I MUST say what I feel and think in some way — it is such a relief! But the effort is getting to be greater than the relief.

I enjoy poetry where I can talk as bizarre as I please, but theology or philosophy, I always respect the truth by taking it a step further.

A great writer picks up on those things that matter. It’s almost like their radar is attuned to the most significant moments.

Fear and self-doubt are the deadly enemies of creativity. Don’t invite either into your mind.

If we don't value the people who inspire us (and money is one mark of that) then what kind of culture are we building?

Story seems to say that everything happens for a reason and I want to say, No, it doesn’t.

Copywriters, journalists, mainstream authors, ghostwriters, bloggers and advertising creatives have as much right to think of themselves as good writers as academics, poets, or literary novelists.

Is it foolish to care for non-existent folk?Then, leave me to my foolishness.

Hardship is vanishing, but so is style, and the two are more closely connected than the present generation supposes.

An unfinished book. left unattended, turns feral, and she would need all her focus, will and ruthless determination to tame it again.

Words will never fully capture what is alive in our hearts.It would be a shame, though, if we denied our bears their dancing.

A word out of place or an interesting choice of vocabulary can spawn a whole character.

Sometimes we don't need words. Rather, it's words that need us.

To withhold words is power. But to share our words with others, openly and honestly, is also power.

Words themselves are all the ghosts we need.

Words are precious things meant to create, to imagine, to dream with.

The blazing fire makes flames and brightness out of everything thrown into it.