Writing Quotes

My intention was to write a chapter of the moral history of my country and I chose Dublin for the scene because that city seemed to me the centre of paralysis.

Writing every book is like a purge; at the end of it one is empty ... like a dry shell on the beach, waiting for the tide to come in again.

Do not copy my style! The first rule of writing is write about what you know, not what you think you know. So, think about what you've done in your life and write about that.

When writing loses touch with the beautiful surface of the world, it loses its way. You always want to be in touch with how things look and what people say and what they call their dogs.

But if I worried too much about publishers' expectations, I'd probably paralyze myself and not be able to write anything.

If you believe you can make a living as a writer, you already have enough ego.

I never started from ideas but always from character.

Children can write poetry and then, unless they're poets, they stop when reach puberty.

If writers were good businessmen, they'd have too much sense to be writers.

I need to keep traveling, being a gypsy, having experiences and writing about them.

I think the press does, too; it's just the few crazies and paparazzi that give them a bad name. Real writers write good things. My daughter's a writer, and she's a quality writer.

The purpose of paragraphing is to give the reader a rest. The writer is saying . . . : Have you got that? If so, I'll go to the next point.

Behind the perfection of a man's style, must lie the passion of a man's soul.

not writing is not good but trying to write when you can't is worse.

A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit.

To write a poem you must have a streak of arrogance-- not in real life I hope. In real life try to be nice. It will save you a hell of a lot of trouble and give you more time to write.

The more words I have, the more distinct, precise my perceptions become--and such lucidity is a form of joy.

Ideas are the most fragile things in the world, and if you do not write them down, they will be lost forever.

Every word born of an inner necessity - writing must never be anything else.

I never drink while I'm working, but after a few glasses I get ideas that would never have occurred to me dead sober.

The drama of the essay is the way the public life intersects with my personal and private life. It's in that intersection that I find the energy of the essay.

I write because I hate. A lot. Hard.

I write letters to my right brain all the time. They're just little notes. And right brain, who likes to get little notes from me, will often come through within a day or two.

The true life is not reducible to words spoken or written, not by anyone, ever.

Writing is the supreme solace.

I am writing in the garden. To write as one should of a garden one must write not outside it or merely somewhere near it, but in the garden.

Language exists less to record the actual than to liberate the imagination.

Aha! Today I shall become an author! And I will auth and auth and auth and make a squillion dollars, whoopee!

I get angry about things, then go on and work.

In the planning stage of a book, don't plan the ending. It has to be earned by all that will go before it.

Nobody reads a book to get to the middle.

The writer must be universal in sympathy and an outcast by nature: only then can he see clearly.

When the writer (or the artist in general) says he has worked without giving any thought to the rules of the process, he simply means he was working without realizing he knew the rules.

Strong words outlast the paper they are written upon.

Everyone in the South has no time for reading because they are all too busy writing.

I don't wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to work.

You know how writers are... they create themselves as they create their work. Or perhaps they create their work in order to create themselves.

When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth.

The act of giving voice to this spiritual suffering is, in my view, the sacred duty of the writer.

This is how you do it: you sit down at the keyboard and you put one word after another until its done. It's that easy, and that hard.

I write in order to comprehend, not to express myself.

Any doctor will admit that any drug can have side effects, and that writing a prescription involves weighing the potential benefits against the risks.

You always get more respect when you don't have a happy ending.

When you start putting pen to paper, you see a side of your personal truth that doesn't otherwise reveal itself in conversation or thought.

Good writing is remembering detail. Most people want to forget. Don't forget things that were painful or embarrassing or silly. Turn them into a story that tells the truth.

A great writer reveals the truth even when he or she does not wish to.

If you are a writer you locate yourself behind a wall of silence and no matter what you are doing, driving a car or walking or doing housework you can still be writing, because you have that space.

Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about.

It is easy for men to write and talk like philosophers, but to act with wisdom, there is the rub!

I can write for any magazine now, in any voice. I can do it in two hours, I could do it in my sleep, it's like writing a grocery list.