About Writing Quotes

Every kind of book I've written has been written in a different way. There has not been any set time for writing, any set way, I haven't re-invented the process every time but I almost have.

Writing is about culture and should be about everything. That's what makes it what it is.

I spend so much time on the screen when I am writing, the last thing you want to do is spend more time on the Internet looking at a screen. That's what I hate about all this technology.

Writing is finally play, and there's no reason why you should get paid for playing

In a novel, it's hard to keep track of everybody

You must avoid giving hostages to fortune, like getting an expensive wife, an expensive house, and a style of living that never lets you aford the time to take the chance to write what you wish.

Isaac Singer was born in Poland and doesn't write in English. Still, he's an American.

Never judge your own writing. You're not fit to do so.

So, then, what is style? There are two chief aspects of any piece of writing: 1) what you say and 2) how you say it. The former is "content" and the latter is "style."

When I feel difficulty coming on, I switch to another book I'm writing. When I get back to the problem, my unconscious has solved it.

I've always been interested in writing from the perspective of an outsider.

Writing isn't letters on paper. It's communication. It's memory.

I write not for your farthing, but to try. How I your farthing writers, may outvie.

What happens in the world affects me. Sometimes, that's part of the writing.

That is the best part of writing: finding the hidden treasures, giving sparkle to worn out events, invigorating the tired soul with imagination, creating some kind of truth with many lies.

In 2011, I announced that I was going to retire, and my agent panicked. So she says: No, no, no. You have to write a book with your husband.

Before I start writing, before I have an idea of where and when the story happens, I research it thoroughly.

Write to register history, and name each thing. Write what should not be forgotten.

My writing comes not from the happy moments, but from struggle and grief.

The connection that I have with my readers makes me very happy, and gives meaning to the strange profession of writing

I have learned many things in the 30 years that I have been writing.

Writing is my job. I don't think of it as art.

After a few months without writing, months I've lived turned outward... I fear going deaf, not being able to hear the silence.

I feel that my life and therefore my writing accept the possibility of all the mystery. Everything we don't know; everything that can possibly happen.

I've been a foreigner for the past twenty years. I don't have roots anymore. My roots are in my memory and my writing. That's why memory is so important. Who are you but what you can remember?

I write short stories. I write every day.

My stuff is direct. Critics have compared my writing style with boxing all the way back to 1978 when my first book of essays appeared: it was compared to Muhammad Ali's style.

My work holds up the mirror to hypocrisy, which puts me in a tradition of American writing that reaches back to Nathaniel Hawthorne.

I'm not against White writers writing about Blacks as long as they are as objective as say James McPherson writing about an Irish American janitor in his brilliant short story "Gold Coast."

Regardless of the criticisms I receive from the left, the right and the middle, I think it's important to maintain a prolific writing jab, as long as my literary legs hold up.

I still write. I'd love to write more trashy chick-lit. At the moment, I just re-write my own lines, which probably annoys most directors - though, thankfully not Adam Brooks!

It's about a young man who has climbed to fame and he discovers that his writing and the relationship with his wife are really more important for him than anything else.

The short story form allows evocation, suggestion, implication. Its potency often lies in what it does not say.

I felt no need to write a German-bashing play.

It is only through the confining act of writing that the immensity of the nonwritten becomes legible

I believe that improvisation is really just a directorial tool. It's a writing tool.

[On writing:] What a difficult kind of work to choose! But of course one did not choose it. There was no choice.

I've been writing for a long time. I sat down to write my first novel in the middle of March of 1982.

A novelist who writes nothing for 10 years finds his reputation rising. Because I keep on producing books they say there must be something wrong with this fellow.

I never write jokes, I just try to make myself laugh.

If a 25-year old can't read and write and he or she isn't gaining marketable skills, it doesn't matter if a Republican or a Democrat is in the White House. His or her future will be bleak.

There is a marvelous peace in not publishing ... I like to write. I love to write. But I write just for myself and my own pleasure.

An author who enjoys writing may sometimes please other people by accident, but he can never pass on to any one else the zestful thrill he feels himself.

Yes, sometimes I think that all my writing is nothing more than the compensatory work of a frustrated painter.

But I wouldn't recommend writing. You can be a successful writer and never meet another soul. I'm not sure that's a good thing.

It's true that I have very little idea what I shall be writing next, but at the same time I have a powerful premonition of everything that lies ahead of me, even ten years ahead.

I don't try and write strong female characters or strong male characters, I just try and write, hopefully, strong characters and sometimes they happen to be female.

Read as much as you possibly can. Nothing will help you as much as reading.

I'll be writing until I can't write anymore. It's a compulsion with me. I love writing.

You have to kill a lot of trees before you write anything good.