Quotes About Writing

It's the writing that teaches you.

I made up my mind long ago to follow one cardinal rule in all my writing—to be clear. I have given up all thought of writing poetically or symbolically or experimentally, or in any of the other modes that might (if I were good enough) get me a Pulitzer prize. I would write merely clearly and in this way establish a warm relationship between myself and my readers, and the professional critics—Well, they can do whatever they wish.

a moving finger having once written could never be lured back to unwrite.

It is amazing to me that I continued writing. I can only explain it by my experience in later life. When I have felt depressed and unhappy, the only anodyne I had (since I have never smoked, drunk, or drugged) was to write.

Debes seguir enviando tu trabajo; nunca debes dejar un manuscrito guardado en un cajón y cogiendo polvo. Manda ese trabajo una y otra vez mientras trabajas en el siguiente. Si tienes talento, alcanzarás algún tipo de éxito. Pero sólo si persistes.

January 1950, Doubleday published my first book, the science-fiction novel Pebble in the Sky, and I was hard at work on a second novel.

If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster. --Isaac Asimov

nunca llegué a escribir un ensayo serio sobre robótica.

The waste basket is the writer's best friend.

That, by the way, was Kafka's problem when it came to writing: he saw all the defects—his own and everyone else's.

I didn't expect that anyone would be interested in my kind of writing. I was interested, and this was for me enough.

Barrabas came to us by sea, the child Clara wrote in her delicate calligraphy.

After a few months without writing, months I've lived turned outward... I fear going deaf, not being able to hear the silence.

January 8 has been a lucky day for me. I have started all my books on that day, and all of them have been well received by the readers. I write eight to ten hours a day until I have a first draft, then I can relax a little. I am very disciplined. I write in silence and solitude. I light a candle to call inspiration and the muses, and I surround myself with pictures of the people I love, dead and alive.

A novel is achieved with hard work, the short story with inspiration.

As I travel through life, I gather experiences that lie imprinted on the deepest strata of memory, and there they ferment, are transformed, and sometimes rise to the surface and sprout like strange plants from other worlds. What is the fertile humus of the subconscious composed of? Why are certain images converted into recurrent themes in nightmares or writing?

Nadie sabe para quién escribe. Cada libro es un mensaje lanzado en una botella al mar con la esperanza de que arribe a otra orilla.

I'd realized that in writing happiness is useless-without suffering there is no story.

Lanzarme con otro libro es tan grave como enamorarme, un impulso alocado que exige dedicación fanática. Con cada uno, como ante un nuevo amor, me pregunto si me alcanzarán las fuerzas para escribirlo y si acaso semejante proyecto vale la pena: hay demasiadas páginas inútiles y demasiados amoríos frustrados.

Writing, when all is said and done, is an attempt to understand one's own circumstance and to clarify the confusion of existence, including insecurities that do not torment normal people, only chronic nonconformists, many of whom end up as writers after having failed in other undertakings.

Me resulta complicado escribir sobre mi vida, porque no sè cuánto recuerdo y cuánto es producto de mi imaginación;la estricta verdad puede ser tediosa y por eso, sin darme ni cuenta, la cambio o la exagero, pero me he propuesto corregir ese defecto y mentir lo menos posible en el futuro.

Si escribo algo, temo que suceda, si amo demasiado a alguien temo perderlo; sin embargo no puedo dejar de escribir ni de amar...

Mediante la fotografía y la palabra escrita intento desesperadamente vencer la condición fugaz de mi existencia, atrapar los momentos antes de que se desvanezcan, despejar la confusión de mi pasado.

She accused him of having grandiose ideas and sloppy habits, a fatal combination for a writer.