Quotes About Writing

Contemporary literature can be classified under three headings: the neurotic, the erotic and the tommy-rotic.

The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable, and literature is not read.

The palest ink is better than the best memory.

Talent isn't enough. You need motivation-and persistence, too: what Steinbeck called a blend of faith and arrogance. When you're young, plain old poverty can be enough, along with an insatiable hunger for recognition. You have to have that feeling of "I'll show them." If you don't have it, don't become a writer.

I never work better than when I am inspired by anger; when I am angry, I can write, pray, and preach well, for then my whole temperament is quickened, my understanding sharpened, and all mundane vexations and temptations depart.

There's only one good reason to be a writer-we can't help it! We'd all like to be successful, rich and famous, but if those are our goals, we're off on the wrong foot. ... I just wanted to earn enough money so I could work at home on my writing.

I write as a sow piddles.

Journalism is literature in a hurry.

Carelessness is not fatal to journalism, nor are cliches, for the eye rests lightly on them. But what is intended to be read once can seldom be read more than once; a journalist has to accept the fact that his work, by its very todayness, is excluded from any share in tomorrow.

News is the first rough draft of history.

The only way to find out if you can write is to set aside a certain period every day and try. Save enough money to give yourself six months to be a full-time writer. Work every day and the pages will pile up.

I read my own books sometimes to cheer me when it is hard to write, and then I remember that it was always difficult, and how nearly impossible it was sometimes.

Time is the author of authors.

I feel successful when the writing goes well. This lasts five minutes. Once, when I was on the bestseller list, I also felt successful. That lasted three minutes.

My favourite example (of ex-patriotism) is James Joyce, who left Ireland at nineteen and never came back. But he spent the rest of his life writing about Ireland from the perspective of living in Paris.

Nothing you write, if you hope to be any good, will ever come out as you first hoped.

A book or poem which has no pity in it had better not be written.

They lard their lean books with the fat of others' works.

There's no right way of writing. There's only your way.

It is healthier, in any case, to write for the adults one's children will become than for the children one's "mature" critics often are.

I am a writer because writing is the thing I do best.

I write lustily and humorously. It isn't calculated; it's the way I think. I've invented a writing style that expresses who I am.

I wrote because I had to. I couldn't stop. There wasn't anything else I could do. If no one ever bought anything, anything I ever did, I'd still be writing. It's beyond a compulsion.

For me, writing is the only thing that passes the three tests of metier: (i) when I'm doing it, I don't feel that I should be doing something else instead; (2) it produces a sense of accomplishment and, once in a while, pride; and (3) it's frightening.