Quotes About Writing

People say writing is really hard. That's very unfair to those who are doing real jobs. People who work in the fields or fix roofs, engineers, or car mechanics. I think lying on your back working under an oily car, that's a job.

The process of writing a story isn't about fair. It's about getting to the heart of your story, getting to the truth of it. It transcends ideals of fair and unfair, right and wrong.

Writing can be taken up at any point. But you need to remember that the arts are fundamentally unfair. Hard work and diligence won't necessarily take you all the way. Talent, nepotism, influence, and pure luck play a huge part.

For years, there was no man in the house when my husband was off on law cases in the Far East. Without writing, I would have been bored and unfaithful, maybe both, and the children would have been hideously over-protected.

I had gone to the bookstore, and while I hadn't bought any books on how to write a screenplay, I'd bought a couple of scripts so I could see how the formatting works. I just needed to know how a Hollywood screenplay looked on the page, which was something I was totally unfamiliar with.

You can't die with an unfinished book.

I write... sonnets... and writing sonnets is boring. You have to find rhymes; you have to write hendecasyllables; so after a while, I get bored and my drawer is overflowing with unfinished short poems.

I won't leave any unfinished manuscripts.

Although I did admire David Foster Wallace's final unfinished novel about boredom, I'm no DFW, and I want my books to be exciting, not boring.

I have a lot of novels that I haven't finished. I usually get 150 pages in and I realize it's not going anywhere. I don't publish everything I write. I must have six unfinished novels at least.

I always write three or four projects at the same time. They're stories that I want to tell, and usually I dump them unfinished for the next one in order not to get too cornered and depressed about it.

If you're writing a thriller, and you don't make it compelling, then you've really not done your job. So it's easier for me not to set out with certain goals, and then I can't see them as unmet. It's like life generally: If I'm not aiming to be physically fit, then I'm not always thinking about being unfit.

Because I never plan anything out ahead of time, I'm always in the process of learning about my characters. Without a biographical sketch to guide me, I discover things about my heroines as the stories unfold. Only in 'Body Double' did I discover that Maura's mother was a serial killer.

I like to be surprised. Fresh implications and plot twists erupt as a story unfolds. Characters develop backgrounds, adding depth and feeling. Writing feels like exploring.

I have had the unfortunate experience of having someone write an unauthorised biography of me. Half of it is lies and the other half is badly written. My feeling is that if I'm going to write my life story, I ought to have my life first.

Unfortunately, writing and reporting the truth is not allowed under Castro's tyrannical dictatorship.

I can fake decent penmanship, but generally, it's really just terrible. And, unfortunately for me, maybe fortunately for the reader, it's very often illegible. If I get an idea, and if I do remember to write it down, which is rare, I write in such a way that I can't read a letter.

Unfortunately, I don't get to read nearly as much as I want because I'm always working on my own stuff, either the novels or newspaper columns.

Fortunately for me, or unfortunately, they made me an editor of the Parish Prison Pelican. I could read and write, and I had a way with words.

I would love to learn archery. Unfortunately I'm too busy writing and drawing ten thousand comics a month. Maybe one day!

Those men that in their writings are most wise Own nothing but their blind, stupefied hearts.

I have admired Melissa Pritchard's writing for several years now for its wisdom, its humble elegance, and its earthy comedy.

He was a man who wrote, who interpreted the world. Wisdom grew out of being handed just the smallest sliver of emotion. A glance could lead to paragraphs of theory.

I believe Jack Smith might have written THE BOOK on writing and revising for publication. Clean, direct, succinct--a book that is full of pure wisdom and truth, but also amazing technical advice.