Quotes About Writing

Lo que se escribe es siempre otra cosa Y lo que se describe es de nuevo otra cosa Entre ambos está lo indescrito que tan pronto como es descrito abre nuevos territorios indescritos Es indescriptible Aunque la oscuridad esté definida por luz y la luz por oscuridad siempre queda un resto fuera.

is the misquotation of Keats, when Némirovsky writes: "This thing of Beauty is a guilt for ever." I have deliberately retained this mistake in the text as a poignant reminder that Némirovsky was writing Suite Française in the depths of the French countryside, with a sense of urgent foreboding and nothing but her memory as a source.

Beware: forget the reworking of characters. Obviously, the time-span is short. The first three parts, in any case, will only cover a period of three years. As for the last two, well that's God's secret and what I wouldn't give to know it.

Others were compiling a hasty mental inventory of all the pages they'd written, all the speeches they'd given, which might help them win favour with the new government (and since they had all more or less lamented the fact that France had lost her greatness, lost her daring and was no longer producing children, none of them was very worried).

Reading and writing and the preservation of language and its forms and the kind of eloquence and the kind of beauty which the language is capable of is terribly important to the human beings because this is connected to thought.

Even if readers claim that they 'take it all with a grain of salt', they do not really. They yearn to believe, and they believe, because believing is easier than disbelieving, and because anything which is written down is likely to be 'true in a way'.

It is necessary to write, that much is clear, and to write in a way quite unlike any way which I have employed before.

Plato was suspicious of writing which seems to remove knowledge from the present moment of the individual and lodge it elsewhere, in books, which are inert and cannot defend themselves against fools.

Yet on the other hand, I did manage to write, and without more than occasional repining, during my years of bondage, and I would not, as some unsatisfied writers do, blame my lack of productivity upon my lack of time.

Even if readers claim that they 'take it all with a grain of salt', they do not really. They yearn to believe, and they believe, because believing is easier than disbelieving, and because anything which is written down is likely to be 'true in a way'. I trust this passing reflection will not lead anyone to doubt the truth of any part of this story! When I come to describe my life with Clement Makin credulity will be strained but will I hope not fail!

Writing is like getting married. One should never commit oneself until one is amazed at one's luck.

But what words exactly did he use? People who aren't writers never describe things exactly .

A letter is a barrier, a reprieve, a charm against the world, an almost infallible method of acting at a distance.

Even as I write these words, which should be lucid and filled with glowing colour, I feel the very darkness of my own personality invading my pen. Only perhaps in the ink of this darkness can this writing properly be written? It is not really possible to write like an angel, though some of our near-gods by heaven-inspired trickery sometimes seem to do it.

What dangerous machines letters are. Perhaps it is as well that they are going out of fashion. A letter can be endlessly reread and reinterpreted, it stirs imagination and fantasy, it persists, it is red-hot evidence.

Everybody talks about being a writer, angel. If every novel conceived on a bar stool made it into print, there would not be one tree left standing on God's green Earth.

writing about drugs is like that though, isn't it? You can just tell when someone is writing about drugs and they've never really done them. It screams out at you. That's something where I believe you have to have been there to really get it, y'know?

Everybody talks about being a writer, angel. If every novel conceived on a bar stool made it into print, there wood not be one tree left standing on God's green Earth.

think young writers should get other degrees first, social sciences, arts degrees or even business degrees. What you learn is research skills, a necessity because a lot of writing is about trying to find information.

You can't write a song out of thin air you have to feel and know what you are writing about.

What I will be remembered for are the Foundation Trilogy and the Three Laws of Robotics. What I want to be remembered for is no one book, or no dozen books. Any single thing I have written can be paralleled or even surpassed by something someone else has done. However, my total corpus for quantity, quality and variety can be duplicated by no one else. That is what I want to be remembered for.

And [Asimov]'ll sign anything, hardbacks, softbacks, other people's books, scraps of paper. Inevitably someone handed him a blank check on the occasion when I was there, and he signed that without as much as a waver to his smile — except that he signed: 'Harlan Ellison.

Writing is a lonely job. Even if a writer socializes regularly, when he gets down to the real business of his life, it is he and his type writer or word processor. No one else is or can be involved in the matter.

Whenever I have endured or accomplished some difficult task -- such as watching television, going out socially or sleeping -- I always look forward to rewarding myself with the small pleasure of getting back to my typewriter and writing something.