Quotes About Writing

I turn to look over my shoulder - in a minute, I will lay down my pen - and think, write that there is only one thing I know for certain, and it has everything to do with "happy". Indeed, it is the last thing I will say on the subject: There is not a story, in the entire history of the world, that cannot be improved upon by the inclusion of a character named Kit.

The first series I wrote, 'L.A. Candy ' was always meant to be a three-book series, so when I started out it was all outlined that way and by the time I was done with the third book, I had become so involved and the process and the stories, I was a little bit sad to be done.

God is a novelist. He uses all sorts of literary devices: alliteration, assonance, rhyme, synecdoche, onomatopoeia. But of all of these, His favorite is foreshadowing. And that is what God was doing at the Cloisters and with Eudora Welty. He was foreshadowing. He was laying traps, leaving clues, clues I could have seen had I been perceptive enough.

Essay writing is not about facts, although the essay may contain facts. Essay writing is about transcribing the often convoluted process of thought, leaving your own brand of breadcrumbs in the forest so that those who want to can find their way to your door. xvii The essayist often brings to the writing table an odd mix of shame and showmanship and it may well be that the tension thererin is what propels the work. xx

But that initial, comet-blazing-across-the-sky, Big Idea is only the beginning. Each book is composed of a mosaic of thousands of little ideas, ideas that invariably come to me at two in the morning when my alarm is set for seven.

the land written by Amerigo Vespucci after his visit in 1502.

One of the arts is creative writing and profound secrets are hidden in novels.

Q. Why do you write? A. I have found no other way of getting rid of my thoughts.

I will never again read an author of whom I suspect that he wanted to make a book, but only those whose thoughts unexpectedly became a book.

In another letter, he suggests that writing the book was "purchased so dearly and with such hardship that nobody who had the choice would have written it at that price".

My failure, during the first five or six years of my art training, to get set in the right direction, and the disappointment which it caused me, drove me the more persistently into writing as an alternative.

Before publishers' blurbs were invented, authors had to make their reputations by writing.

I begin with writing the first sentence—and trusting to Almighty God for the second.

I have undertaken, you see, to write not only my life, but my opinions also; hoping and expecting that your knowledge of my character, and of what kind of a mortal I am, by the one, would give you a better relish for the other: As you proceed further with me, the slight acquaintance which is now beginning betwixt us, will grow into familiarity; and that, unless one of us is in fault, will terminate in friendship.

To write a book is for all the world like humming a song—be but in tune with yourself, madam, 'tis no matter how high or how low you take it.

Writing, when properly managed, (as you may be sure I think mine is) is but a different name for conversation.

O]f all the several ways of beginning a book which are now in practice throughout the known world, I am confident my own way of doing it is the best—I'm sure it is the most religious—for I begin with writing the first sentence—and trusting to Almighty God for the second.

Si je n'avais pas ce cahier, je crois que je me serais lentement laissée aller au désespoir. Je ne savais pas que les mots peuvent sauver. Aujourd'hui, je le sais : il maintiennent le lien à soi. Ils permettent de ne pas s'égarer dans la nuit profonde de la folie.

First, I do not sit down at my desk to put into verse something that is already clear in my mind. If it were clear in my mind, I should have no incentive or need to write about it. We do not write in order to be understood; we write in order to understand.

If God inspires your writing, others will know because it will inspire them when they read it.

to write only when you're inspired devalues the craft and defies your need to learn and improve. If you're committed to excellence in writing, you accept responsibility to do everything you can for your own self-improvement.

Good writing demands self-discipline and constant learning

I certainly didn't say while writing 'Gossip Girl ' 'Oh this is going to be big!' It was really like, 'Oh god, everyone's gong to hate these people! They're so bratty!' But I actually think what is so appealing about them is the humor in them.

I decided that, if I were to write a teen series, I'd want to set it in a place that was familiar to me - Manhattan, where I'd grown up - and I'd model the characters on myself and my friends.