Quotes About Writing

The Marines see that I'm a television reporter working solo—shooting, writing and transmitting my reports without a crew—and they tell me they like my self-reliance. I tell them it's a necessity, because no one wants to work with me anymore.

I think the advent of the Internet gave us all a big boost, because by the time the Internet became mainstream and you could get it in your home, a lot of us were used to dealing in fan culture, writing to magazines or anything at the back of comic books.

His writing had become, like a stash of rare and troubling pornography, something that must be kept hidden, an obsession that other people would be mystified to discover.

These weird thoughts come into my head, and I don't even really want to think about it, but I can't let go of it until I take it as far as I can, until I reach some kind of ending, and then I can move on. That's what writing is like for me.

No, she decided, she was taking care of him; someone in this family had to make sound decisions, even if they weren't as fascinating in the end, the lack of any explosions, no screaming or crying or psychological scarring. Then she thought of Daniel, growing an impressive beard in Wyoming, writing the most ridiculous bullshit a human could think of, and began to reconsider her judgment regarding potential love interests.

We programmers are weird creatures. We love writing code. But when it comes to reading it we usually shy away. After all, writing code is so much more fun, and reading code is hard — sometimes almost impossible.

A non-programmer friend once remarked that code looks like poetry. I get that feeling from really good code, that everything in the text has a purpose and that it's there to help me understand the idea. Unfortunately, writing code doesn't have the same romantic image aswriting poetry.

in order to write good English one should be familiar with the Bible as well as European fairy tales, nursery rhymes and even nonsense verse like the limericks of Edward Lear. I read them not for fun but as the basics of literature.

I can write about it if I am careful, if I keep it far enough away.

She would never have a day that she did not see something and hear a voice in her mind say, "Remember this and then write this." Chapter 6 p. 96

Of course it happened. If I wrote something that hadn't really happened, and I tried to sell it, I could go to jail. That's fraud.

If your workshop praises a poem, don't think everyone is too nice to tell you how terrible it really is. (If it is that kind of workshop, you should get out of it as soon as possible—honest feedback is the sign that people respect your writing and take it seriously.)

I explained already about suffering and about each one of you, destined to be isolate and alone because writing is lonely work

But don't wait for something to happen before you begin to write; pay attention to the world around you, right now.

The truth is that writing is simply not reliable. You can't count on it to be there just because you've made time for it. In fact, making space might make it disappear.

Writing a novel is like having a baby. I know because I've had both, and the experiences were hellish. By comparison, the torture of the damned—plunged into excrement, boiled in blood, beheaded, set upon by harpies—are like love nips from your yippy little dog.

Beginning writers tend to think that craft is their enemy. As long as they believe that, they will remain beginners, no matter how many years they write.

Forget wondering, Am I good enough? Can I do this? The only thing you really need to ask yourself is: Is writing my genius? If it is, then apprentice yourself.

On whatever level you are presently concerned with death (and we assume you are; after all, death is concerned with you), you should feel free to write about it.

Reading is like food to a writer; without it, the writer part of you will die—or become spindly and stunted.

There is unequaled satisfaction in composing words on a blank page, sealing them in an envelope, writing an address in my own messy hand, adding a stamp, walking it to the mailbox, and raising the flag. It's like preparing a gift, and I feel like I receive one when a letter arrives....

Writing about New York is hard. Not because memories intersect and overlap, because of course they do. Not because incidents and times mix with others, because that happens too. Not because I didn't fall in love with New York, because even though I was lonely and poor, no place had ever made me feel more at home. It is because knowing what I know now, it's hard to write about a love story with a broken heart.

it's hard to write about a love story with a broken heart

Trying to write on a deadline is like trying to have an orgasm with a gun to your head.