Writing Quotes
Journalism allows it's readers to witness history. Fiction gives its readers an opportunity to live it.
The most lasting reputation I have is for an almost ferocious aggressiveness when in fact I am amiable indulgent affectionate shy and rather timid at heart.
The life of a writer is tragic: the more we advance the farther there is to go and the more there is to say the less time there is to say it.
When the style is fully formed if it has a sweet undersong we call it beautiful and the writer may do what he likes in words or syntax.
They're fancy talkers about themselves writers. If I had to give young writers advice I would say don't listen to writers talking about writing or themselves.
There are two kinds of writers - the great ones who can give you truths and the lesser ones who can only give you themselves.
Fundamentally all writing is about the same thing: it's about dying about the brief flicker of time we have here and the frustrations that it creates.
I am what libraries and librarians have made me with a little assistance from a professor of Greek and a few poets.
Our society like decadent Rome has turned into an amusement society with writers chief among the court jesters - not so much above the clatter as part of it.
A writer and nothing else: a man alone in a room with the English language trying to get human feelings right.
The llama is a woolly sort of fleecy hairy goat With an indolent expression and an undulating throat - Like an unsuccessful literary man.
Words and sentences are subjects of revision paragraphs and whole compositions are subjects of prevision.
There is nothing more dangerous to the formation of a prose style than the endeavour to make it poetic.
Now as through this world I ramble I see lots of funny men Some rob you with a six gun Some with a fountain pen.
It is the function of art to renew our perception. What we are familiar with we cease to see. The writer shakes up the familiar scene and as if by magic we see a new meaning in it.
Better to write for yourself and have no public than to write for the public and have no self.
A good writer is basically a story-teller not a scholar or a redeemer of mankind.
I believe the writer... should always be the final judge. I have always held to that position and have sometimes seen books hurt thereby but at least as often helped. The book belongs to the author.
You praise the firm restraint with which they write - I'm with you there of course: They use the snaffle and the curb all right But where's the bloody horse?
At least half the mystery novels published violate the law that the solution once revealed must seem to be inevitable.
On the trail of another man the biographer must put up with finding himself at every turn: any biography uneasily shelters an autobiography within it.
Writing is a solitary occupation. Family friends and society are the natural enemies of a writer. He must be alone uninterrupted and slightly savage if he is to sustain and complete an undertaking.
Just as there is nothing between the admirable omelette and the intolerable so with autobiography.
I think it's bad to talk about one's present work for it spoils something at the root of the creative act. It discharges the tension.
As for my next book I am going to hold myself from writing it till I have it impending in me: grown heavy in my mind like a ripe pear pendant gravid asking to be cut or it will fall.
Writing is easy: all you do is sit staring at the blank sheet of paper until the drops of blood form on your forehead.
Bottom line, when someone defensively says their way of writing is their style, then that usually means they're making an excuse for poor prose.
Despite my affection for subtext and plot and prose at its best... life, it turns out, is nothing more than the finer details.
And I howled at that swarm and the crops and the sky, and the stars should have quit because there weren't no reason to be shining.
Slaying dragons, melting witches, and banishing demons is all fun and games until someone loses a sidekick—then it’s personal. The bad guy isn’t just the “bad guy” anymore, he’s the BAD GUY!
I’ve come to the end of another book alive. At times like this I’m always at a loss for words.
My rule is never save bits. They get the way, and you don't think of anything new. Put 'em in. Make a big mess.
The paradox of writing is that you’re trying to use words to express what words can’t express.
You could say, in a way, that I'm not actually a writer, though perhaps I might be called a recorder? ... I just happen to be one of those holding the pen, that's all.