Quotes About Writing

Kathleen Norris, on the publication of her 78th book. 'All writing is difficult. The most you can hope for is a day when it goes reasonably easily. Plumbers don't get plumber's block, and doctors don't get doctor's block; why should writers be the only profession that gives a special name to the difficulty of working, and then expects sympathy for it?

The task, and the joy, of writing for me is that I can play with the metaphors that God has placed in the world and present them to others in a way they will accept. My goal is to allow readers their own experience of whatever discovery I have made, so that it feels new to them, but also familiar, in that it is of a piece with their own experience. It is a form of serious play.

the imagination works not so much through inspiration as through perseverance. One must slog through the false starts, spot the wrong words and hold out for the right ones, and above all, be vigilant about staying on the path of revision, no matter how uncomfortable or even painful the journey might become.

I don't go to graduate school. Instead, I move to New York, the city where I naively imagine writers must go.

I have to write. It's not an option. When I write, I am literally building myself a place in which to live. Once I'm firmly established within the narrative I pop awake in the morning and it's the first thing I think about. Not in an analytical way, as in "Oh, I haven't really reached the crisis point and it's already page 200—I'd better work on that." It's very much just running towards and into the place I most want to be.

letter. That's exactly what I am in God's hand—a little pencil. God is writing his love letter to the world in this way, through works of love.

As I wrote, I found that Aibileen had some things to say that really weren't in her character. She was older, soft-spoken, and she started showing some attitude.

It can be really powerful to write something when you're sad.

I might be writing what people expect me to write, writing from that place where I might be ruled by economic considerations. To overcome that, I started working with my dreams, because I'm not so censored when I use dream material.

A novel is a book with a lot of pages.

Writing is one method of dealing with being human or wanting to suicide cause in order to write you kill yourself at the same time while remaining alive.

one of the main purposes of our assesment is to find evidence of the children using these ideas to make decisions about their writing work each day, catching them in the act [of writing].

Someone once told me that writing is an act of faith. Another person told me that forgiving is also an act of faith. That's true. I think both heal, both are arts. What a fine thing it is to do both at once.

For me God existed in Primo Levi's writing, in the moments of reprieve he described when one human granted another respect in that godless wasteland of cruelty.

And so I had only writing to comfort but it never soothed, it only marked the wound — Kazim Ali, from "Mountain Time," The American Poetry Review (vol. 50, no. 1, January/February 2021)

Screenplays I didn't really care about, journalism, travel books, getting my writer friends to write about their dreams or something. I just determined to write the books I had to write.

Bagi para penulis, karya adalah belahan jiwa mereka. Atau dalam bahasa yang lebih sederhana, mereka menganggap karya mereka sudah seperti anak sendiri. Penulis mencintai karya yang dilahirkannya layaknya para orangtua di dunia yang mencintai anak-anak mereka.

The author and publisher

Write it down, boy. If you come across a passage in your reading that you'd like to remember, write it down in your little book; then you can read it again, memorize it, and have it whenever you wish.

Honestly," he says, "I judge writers on how they write queries. If you're a good writer, you're a good writer." And if not, then not.

It is dated 1521, the same year that Neagoe Basarab completed his "Advice" in Slavic. The differences in the Romanian of the letter from modern Romanian are slight, and the style is polished, evidence that the language had been used in writing for some time

Almost all were total failures-they couldn't have been put on in the village hall for the author's friends. It wasn't a matter of lack of talent, but of miseducation. The authors of the pseudo-plays assumed that writing should be based on other writing, not on life. My play had been influenced by Beckett, but at least the content had been mine.

IMPORTANT NOTICE! The Publisher wishes to point out that no car designers were harmed in the research and writing of this book. Upon reading the book however, readers may decide that perhaps some should have been!

It is modeling revision—taking a rough draft and moving it to a better place—that is critical if our students are to sharpen their writing skills.