Quotes About Writing

Flaubert had infinite correction to perform.

Every writer, without exception, is a masochist, a sadist, a peeping Tom, an exhibitionist, a narcissist, an injustice collector and a depressed person constantly haunted by fears of unproductivity.

We like that a sentence should read as if its author, had he held a plough instead of a pen, could have drawn a furrow deep and straight to the end.

The reason a writer writes a book is to forget a book and the reason a reader reads one is to remember it.

When the style is fully formed, if it has a sweet undersong, we call it beautiful, and the writer may do what he likes in words or syntax.

I have only made this letter rather long because I have not had time to make it shorter.

Footnotes, the little dogs yapping at the heels of the text.

As for style of writing, if one has anything to say, it drops from him simply and directly, as a stone falls to the ground.

What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.

The business of writing is one of the four or five most private things in the world.

My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying . . . one must ruthlessly suppress everything that is not concerned with the subject. If, in the first chapter, you say there is a gun hanging on the wall, you should make quite sure that it is going to be used further on in the story.

(Writing) - the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.

A writer and nothing else: a man alone in a room with the English language, trying to get human feelings right.

How can I know what I think till I see what I say?

If a man means his writing seriously, he must mean to write well. But how can he write well until he learns to see what he has written badly. His progress toward good writing and his recognition of bad writing are bound to unfold at something like the same rate.

Words and sentences are subjects of revision; paragraphs and whole compositions are subjects of prevision.

There is nothing more dangerous to the formation of a prose style than the endeavour to make it poetic.

A good writer is basically a story-teller, not a scholar or a redeemer of mankind.

Anybody can find out if he is a writer. If he were a writer, when he tried to write of some particular day, he would find in the effort that he could recall exactly how the light fell and how the temperature felt, and all the quality of it. Most people cannot do it. If they can do it, they may never be successful in a pecuniary sense, but that ability is at the bottom of writing, I am sure.

A memorandum is written to protect the writer - not to inform his reader.

I write for myself and strangers. The strangers, dear Readers, are an afterthought.

You praise the firm restraint with which they write - I'm with you, there, of course: They use the snaffle and the curb all right, But where's the bloody horse?

An editor should tell the author his writing is better than it is. Not a lot better, a little better.

Writing is a solitary occupation. Family, friends and society are the natural enemies of a writer. He must be alone, uninterrupted and slightly savage if he is to sustain and complete an undertaking.