Quotes About Writing

Even when I write fiction, which I don't do too often, the fictional characters are familiar to me, like relatives I might have had in another life, and the setting is a place I know or have known. If I feel acquainted with the people and the landscape, I can enter this world and imagine what happens there and write it down. For me that world will always be some form of home.

It has taken me most of my writing life to understand that my "writing place" is here where I live, and that my "writing voice" is just my regular old voice, the one I use all the time. I am aware that the most important things in my life and my work are so close to me that I didn't even fully recognize them for a long time.

Another reason the "Are you still writing?" question is so hard to answer is that to ask me "Are you still writing?" is like asking "Are you still breathing?" Writing is the way I stay aware of being alive, the way I find out what I'm thinking, the way I understand the world.

Whoever has no house now, will never have one. Whoever is alone will stay alone, will sit, read, write long letters through the evening, and wander on the boulevards, up and down, restlessly, while dry leaves are blowing.

The only excuse a man has for writing is that he express himself, that he reveal to others the kind of world reflected in the mirror of his soul; his only excuse is that he be original.

That 'writers write' is meant to be self-evident. People like to say it. I find it is hardly ever true. Writers drink. Writers rant. Writers phone. Writers sleep. I have met very few writers who write at all.

He wrote very well in those days, as it happens, much better than he does now. He had absolute convictions, and style is nothing more than the absolute conviction of possessing a style.

No me parece que haya que confundir la correspondencia con una deuda bancaria, si bien es cierto que en algo están ligadas: las cartas son como letras que se reciben y se deben. Uno siempre tiene algún remordimiento por algún amigo al que le debe una carta y no siempre la alegría de recibirlas compensa la obligación de contestarlas. Por otro lado, la correspondencia es un género perverso: necesita de la distancia y de la ausencia para prosperar.

Nunca nadie hizo jamás buena literatura con historias familiares. Regla de oro para los escritores debutantes: si escasea la imaginación, hay que ser fiel a los detalles.

Para escribir es preciso no sentirse acomodado en el mundo, es un escudo para afrontar la vida (y hablar de eso). Son

startling—the Romans themselves never read silently, but always aloud; they regarded language as speaking and listening, and viewed writing as merely a convenient means of recording communications spoken and heard.

The world is your exercise book, the pages on which you do your sums. It is not reality, though you may express reality there if you wish. You are also free to write lies, or nonsense, or to tear the pages.

Tell him I said that he will know when he's my age that books aren't written on whims or old promises. Books are written on years turned inside out by ideas that never let go until you get them in print, and even then writing's a last resort, a desperate ransom you pay to get your life back.

Os livros são escritos devido a anos virados do avesso por ideias que não nos libertam até serem escritas e, até mesmo então, a escrita é o último recurso, um resgate desesperado que pagamos para que a vida nos seja devolvida.

It took time to learn that the hard thing about writing is to let the story write itself, while one sits at the typewriter and does as little thinking as possible. It happened over and over again, and the beginner learned — when you start puzzling over an idea, and slowing down on the keys, the writing gets worse and worse.

Is there a rule that a messiah can't write what he thinks is true, the things that have been fun for him, that work for him? And then maybe if people don't like what he says, instead of shooting him they can burn his words, hit the ashes with a stick? And if they do like it, they can read the words another time, or write them on a regrigerator door, or play with whatever ideas make sense to them? Is there something wrong with writing?

A professional writer is an amateur who never gave up.

You were starting to sound a little like a Stephen King novel

I don't teach writing. I teach patience. Toughness. Stubbornness. The willingness to fail. I teach the life. The odd thing is most of the things that stop an inexperienced writer are so far from the truth as to be nearly beside the point. When you feel glosbal doubt about your talent, that is your talent. People who have no talent don't have any doubt.

When you reach a place where you feel blocked, lower your standards and keep on going. There is no possible way to do permanent damage to a piece of writing. You cannot ruin it. You can only make it a little better a little at a time.

To my mind, nothing is as important as good writing, because in literature, the walls between people and cultures are broken down, and the things that plague us most–suspicion and fear of the other, and the tendency to see whole groups of people as objects, as monoliths of one cultural stereotype or another–are defeated.

By the way, Doc Edwards said. How's that book coming along? Oh, it's coming along. Fine. What's it about? Just what I'm writing down: one word after another. Good.

I always wanted to write a book that ended with the word Mayonnaise.

You write with ease, to show your breeding, But easy writing's curst hard reading.