Quotes About Writing

Writing is not a profession but a vocation of unhappiness.

Writing is not a profession but a vocation of unhappiness. I don't think an artist can ever be happy.

In the end, writing arises when man realizes that memory is not enough.

When I write, I know who I am, but once I stop, I am no longer so sure.

Come on, brain. Make words. Make. Words. "Hey

If your plan is not in writing, you do not have a plan at all. Instead, you have only a dream, a vision, or perhaps even a nightmare. The simple written plan works best.

Writing is a conversation, to me. The best kind. You can't get interrupted.

One thing I don't think that we have enough of in wine writing is the use of cause and effect. Whatever wine tastes like, whatever you're going to do with it, it is as it is for a reason.

It is by sitting down to write every morning that one becomes a writer.

When I write a page that reads badly I know that it is myself who has written it. When it reads well it has come through from somewhere else.

It's a distillation of all I know about writing: short-story writing, screenwriting, journalism—everything. There is no future in the novel, so far as I can see. I'm trying to show where writing is going to be. I may not get there, but I will point the way." In

dead by all the relatives. You are supposed to be head of the family – stop him writing it.' 'You do exaggerate, Larry dear,' said Mother. 'Anyway

I can't be expected to produce deathless prose in an atmosphere of gloom and eucalyptus.

PREFACE PROBLEM: Nobody reads prefaces. SOLUTION: Call the preface Chapter 1. NEW PROBLEM CREATED BY SOLUTION: Chapter 1 is boring. RESOLUTION: Throw away Chapter 1 and call Chapter 2 Chapter 1.

Writing books is a suicidal profession. No other demands as much time, as much work, as much dedication, by comparison with its immediate benefits. I don't think many readers finishing a book ask themselves how many hours of anguish and domestic calamities those two hundred pages have cost the author or how much he received for his work …

I knew I was going to be a journalist when I was eight years old and I saw the printing presses rolling at the Sydney newspaper where my dad worked as a proofreader.

Unprovided with original learning, unformed in the habits of thinking, unskilled in the arts of composition, I resolved to write a book.

A writer is rarely so well inspired as when he talks about himself.

I write out of instinct.

I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter.

Chaucer, I confess, is a rough diamond; and must be polished e'er he shines.

Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice; journalism what will be grasped at once.

It has come to be practically a sort of rule in literature that a man, having once shown himself capable of original writing, is entitled thenceforth to steal from the writings of others at discretion.

The novel is a prose narrative of some length that has something wrong with it.