Quotes About Writing

For every letter of creditors, write fifty lines on an extraterrestrial subject and you'll be saved.

The beginning of a novel: start a subject, no matter where, and to have the desire to finish, start with very beautiful phrases.

Sois toujours poète, même en prose

some moments are nice, some are nicer, some are even worth writing about.

He asked, What makes a man a writer? Well, I said, it's simple. You either get it down on paper, or jump off a bridge.

nothing can save you except writing. it keeps the walls from failing.

the writing of some men is like a vast bridge that carries you over the many things that claw and tear. The Wine of Forever

Hey baby, when I write, I'm the hero of my shit.

In the morning it was morning and I was still alive. Maybe I'll write a novel, I thought. And then I did.

When I begin to doubt my ability to work the word, I simply read another writer and know I have nothing to worry about. My contest is only with myself, to do it right, with power, and force, and delight, and gamble.

When I was young I was depressed all the time. But suicide no longer seemed a possibility in my life. At my age there was very little left to kill. It was good to be old, no matter what they said. It was reasonable that a man had to be at least 50 years old before he could write with anything like clarity.

There's no way I can stop writing, it's a form of insanity.

Basically, that's why I wrote: to save my ass, to save my ass from the madhouse, from the streets, from myself.

There is only one place to write and that is alone at a typewriter. The writer who has to go into the streets is a writer who does not know the streets. . . when you leave your typewriter you leave your machine gun and the rats come pouring through.

it does seem the more we drink the better the words go.

Most people are much better at saying things in letters than in conversation, and some people can write artistic, inventive letters, but when they try a poem or story or novel they become pretentious.

young or old, good or bad, I don't think anything dies as slow and as hard as a writer.

I write as a function. Without it I would fall ill and die. It's as much a part of one as the liver or intestine, and just about as glamorous.

Some people have written that my writing has helped them go on. It has helped me too. The writing, the roses, the 9 cats.

bad writing's like bad women: there's just not much you can do about it

I found the best thing I could do was just to type away at my own work and let the dying die as they always have.

Your writing, she said to me, it's so raw. It's like a sledgehammer, and yet it has humor and tenderness. . . .

Do some living and get yourself a typewriter.

I'm going to open another vottle. not a vottle, but a bottle. you open it and I'll drink it. and you try to write as much as I did without falling off of your chair.