Writing Quotes

Real seriousness in regard to writing being one of the two absolute necessities. The other, unfortunately, is talent.

Write hard and clear about what hurts.

The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true.

For every laugh, there should be a tear.

The way to write is to throw your body at the mark when your arrows are spent.

The secret is writing down one simple line after another.

Good novels are not written by orthodoxy-sniffers, nor by people who are conscience-stricken about their own orthodoxy. Good novels are written by people who are not frightened.

We are as much informed of a writer's genius by what he selects as by what he originates.

I've found, in my own writing, that a little hatred, keenly directed, is a useful thing.

Writing is the geometry of the soul.

If you wrote something for which someone sent you a check, if you cashed the check and it didn't bounce, and if you then paid the light bill with the money, I consider you talented.

Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.

There's an epigram tacked to my office bulletin board, pinched from a magazine -- "Wanting to meet an author because you like his work is like wanting to meet a duck because you like pâté.

I jealously guard my research time and I love fully immersing myself in those dusty old books and papers. It's one of the most enjoyable parts of my job.

We write about ourselves because we know about ourselves.

I think talent is like a water table under the earth—you tap it with your effort and it comes through you.

If you want to see the consequences of ideas, write a story. If you want to see the consequences of belief, write a story in which somebody is acting on the ideas or beliefs that she has.

It's my contention that each book creates its own structure and its own length. I've written three or four slim books. It may be that the next novel is a big one, but I don't know.

If you're a writer, the answer to everything is yes.

Vigorous writing is concise.

The finder of his theme will be at no loss for words.

The paper is patient, but the reader is not.

Work. Don't Think. Relax.

My foregrounds are imaginary, my backgrounds real.

Imagination runs through the places where we live like water. We need both things-a living knowledge of the land and a live imagination of it and our place in it- if we are going to preserve it.

A novel must be exceptionally good to live as long as the average cat.

Each writer is born with a repertory company in his head.

If you feel that strongly about something, you have an obligation to try and change my mind.

Our admiration of fine writing will always be in proportion to its real difficulty and its apparent ease.

People who understand everything get no stories.

You can't have good ideas unless you have lots of ideas.

To you I am neither man nor woman. I come before you as an author only. It is the sole standard by which you have a right to judge me--the sole ground on which I accept your judgment.

I don’t go back and look at my early work, because the last time I did, many years ago, it left me cringing. If one publishes, then one is creating a public record of Learning to Write.

I don’t know if you have had the same experience, but the snag I always come up against when I’m telling a story is this dashed difficult problem of where to begin it.

He looked rather pleasantly, like a blonde satan.

I have always been a huge admirer of my own work. I'm one of the funniest and most entertaining writers I know.

When I was a little boy, they called me a liar, but now that I am grown up, they call me a writer.

Virtually every writer I know would rather be a musician.

Writers will happen in the best of families.

Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the back yard and shot it.

A young writer is easily tempted by the allusive and ethereal and ironic and reflective, but the declarative is at the bottom of most good writing.

I wonder sometimes if the motivation for writers ought to be contempt, not admiration.

The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies.

Never use abstract nouns when concrete ones will do. If you mean “More people died” don’t say “Mortality rose.

I write and that way rid myself of me and then at last I can rest.

However, please allow me to say that the fundamental style of my writing has been to start from my personal matters and then to link it up with society, the state and the world.

The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.

More books have resulted from somebody's need to write than from anybody's need to read.

I owe what is best in my own development to the impression made by Kant's works, the sacred writings of the Hindus, and Plato.

One had the right to write because other people needed news of the inner world, and if they went too long without such news they would go mad with the chaos of their lives.