Quotes About Writing

When others write about people who live on the edge, who challenge their comfortable lives—and it has happened to me—they usually do it in a way that allows a reader a way out. You could render generosity into pathology, commitment into obsession. That's all in the repertory of someone who wants to put the reader at ease rather than conveying the truth in a compelling manner.

Writing a novel is like taking a long cross-country journey. The hardest part is getting going, making sure you have all the items you need to take with you, double- and triple-checking that the route you're taking is the best way. So often you leave your driveway and start north when you realize you actually needed to head southwest. I've never written a novel without a certain number of false starts. And it never seems to get easier. Part of me thinks it only gets harder.

To put it simply, we think books are too important to leave to writers, and we want the wisest, most experienced, most knowledgeable people on earth to be able to effectively and easily share their wisdom with the world.

It is not easy to properly position and structure a book, not to mention to do the actual writing.

This is not a small thing. You may not realize this, but the majority of the tacit knowledge that builds civilizations, the stuff that maybe isn't sexy but is foundational knowledge, has actually been lost. Why? Because no one wrote it down. They just passed it on by word of mouth.

Reference piece 9.2: How Writing A Book Can Build Your Brand, and 9.3: How to Make Money With Your Book.

The reason [Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts] doesn't believe in the Bible is because he didn't write it himself.

All the stories I would like to write persecute me. When I am in my chamber, it seems as if they are all around me, like little devils, and while one tugs at my ear, another tweaks my nose, and each says to me, 'Sir, write me, I am beautiful.

The author should die once he has finished writing. So as not to trouble the path of the text.

three fingers hold the pen, but the whole body works.

For the male who dominates and writes, or by writing dominates, the woman has always been portrayed with hostility from the earliest times. Let us not be deceived by angelic descriptions of women. On the contrary, precisely because great literature is dominated by sweet, gentle creatures, the world of satire—which is that of the popular imagination—continually demonizes the woman, from antiquity, through the Middle Ages, and up to modern times.

In the years when I discoverd the Abbé Vallet volume, there was a widespread conviction that one should write only out of a commitment to the present, in order to change the world. Now, after ten years or more, the man of letters (restored to his loftiest dignity) can happily write out of pure love of writing.

A writer writes for writers, a non-writer writes for his next-door neighbor or for the manager of the local bank branch, and he fears (often mistakenly) that they would not understand or, in any case, would not forgive his boldness.

I wrote a novel because I had a yen to do it. I believe this is sufficient reason to set out to tell a story.

I discovered ... that a novel has nothing to do with words in the first instance. Writing a novel is a cosmological matter, like the story told by Genesis (we all have to choose our role models, as Woody Allen puts it).

I dreamed what all losers dream, about one day writing a book that would bring me fame and fortune.

I don't believe one writes for oneself. I think that writing is an act of love- you write in order to give something to someone else. To communicate something. to have other people share your feelings. This problem of how long your work survives is fundamental for a novelist or a poet. One hopes for a sense of continuity.

and I said to him when you learn to read then you learn everything you didnt know before. But when you write you write only what you know allready so patientia Im better off not knowing how to write because the ass is the ass

But this lump does not absolve me, because I got it through heedlessness, not though courage. I run my tongue over my lip and what do I do? I write. But bad literature brings no redemption.

El autor debería morirse después de haber escrito su obra. Para allanarle el camino al texto.

writing a thesis is like writing a book, working incrementally with the professor is a communication exercise that assumes the existence of an audience

La seule chose qu'on écrit pour soi, c'est la liste des courses. Elle sert à vous rappeler ce que vous devez acheter, et une fois vos achats accomplis, vous pouvez la jeter car elle ne sert plus à personne. Tout ce que vous écrivez d'autre, vous l'écrivez pour dire quelque chose à quelqu'un.

I never liked writing concluding paragraphs to papers where you just repeat what you've already said with phrases like 'In summation' and 'To conclude'.

Não pertenço àquela laia de maus escritores que dizem escrever apenas para si mesmos. As únicas coisas que os autores escrevem para si próprios são listas de compras, que os ajudam a lembrar-se do que precisam adquirir, e podem ser descartadas. Tudo o mais, incluindo o rol de roupas para lavar, são mensagens endereçadas a outrem. Não são monólogos, mas diálogos.