Quotes About Writing

I have spent most of the day putting in a comma and the rest of the day taking it out.

God knows; I won't be an Oxford don anyhow. I'll be a poet, a writer, a dramatist. Somehow or other I'll be famous, and if not famous, I'll be notorious. Or perhaps I'll lead the life of pleasure for a time and then—who knows?—rest and do nothing. What does Plato say is the highest end that man can attain here below? To sit down and contemplate the good. Perhaps that will be the end of me too.

In another life I would have liked to be a poet, I just can't stop the lines in time, so I'm a novelist.

Our own thesis was sketched in the Introduction: the classical written Chinese language—the language in which the Analects was composed—is unique, being sharply distinct not only from all non-Sinitic languages but from spoken Chinese as well (ancient and modern), and that the differences between the two Chinese languages are of greater linguistic and philosophical significance than has been generally noticed.

I think literature totally fails when it has an agenda. - From an interview on the podcast Starship Sofa, December 2010.

Moom' and 'tomb' actually rhyme, which is something Dickinson hardly ever did, preferring near-rhymes such as 'mat/gate', 'tune/sun,' and 'balm/hermaphrodite.

This gave me an early taste for humorous authors, of which there were—and are—far too few (though there are lots who labor under the misapprehension that they're funny.)

Translators need a lot of skills besides fluency in at least two languages; translators need to be excellent writers in their native language and need to be interested in and skilled at terminology research using both paper dictionaries and the Internet.

I don't know why I started writing. I don't know why anybody does it. Maybe they're bored, or failures at something else.

I never had any doubts about my abilities. I knew I could write. I just had to figure out how to eat while doing this. [ Cormac McCarthy's Venomous Fiction , New York Times, April 19, 1992]

My perfect day is sitting in a room with some blank paper. That's heaven. That's gold and anything else is just a waste of time.

The ugly fact is books are made out of books, the novel depends for its life on the novels that have been written.

I like what I do. Some writers have said in print that they hated writing and it was just a chore and a burden. I certainly don't feel that way about it. Sometimes it's difficult. You know, you always have this image of the perfect thing which you can never achieve, but which you never stop trying to achieve. But I think ... that's your signpost and your guide. You'll never get there, but without it you won't get anywhere. [ Interview with Oprah Winfrey , June 5, 2007]

His whole life was sitting there in front of him. Day after day from dawn till dark until he was dead. All of it cooked down into forty pounds of paper in a satchel.

Teaching writing is a hustle.

Writing is very subconscious and the last thing I want to do is think about it.

If there is an occupational hazard to writing, it's drinking.

I dont know what to tell you, he wrote. Much has changed and yet everything is the same. I am the same. I always will be. I'm writing because there are things that I think you would like to know. I am writing because there are things I dont want to forget. Everything is gone from my life except you. I dont even know what that means. There are times when I cant stop crying. I'm sorry. I'll try again tomorrow

I hear people talking about going on a vacation or something and I think, what is that about? I have no desire to go on a trip. My perfect day is sitting in a room with some blank paper. That's heaven. That's gold and anything else is just a waste of time.

What you write down becomes fixed. It takes on the constraints of any tangible entity. It collapses into a reality estranged from the realm of its creation. It's a marker. A roadsign. You have stopped to get your bearings, but at a price. You'll never know where it might have gone if you'd left it alone to go there.

His whole life was sitting there in front of him. Day after day from dawn till dark until he was dead. All of it cooked down into forty pounds of paper in a satchel. He

Die Geschichte ist eine Sammlung von Papier. Ein paar verblassende Erinnerungen. Nach einer Weile ist das, was nicht geschrieben steht, nie geschehen.

I don't know what to tell you, he wrote. Much has changed and yet everything is the same. I am the same. I always will be. I'm writing because there are things that I think you would like to know. I am writing because there are things I dont want to forget. Everything is gone from my life except you. I dont even know what that means.

Desperate? So what? I'm desperate, too! Fenoglio snapped at her. My story is foundering in misfortune, and these hands here, he said holding them out to her, don't want to write anymore! I'm afraid of words Meggie! 'Once they were like honey, now they're poison, pure poison! But what is a writer who doesn't love words anymore? What have I come to? This story is devouring me, crushing me, and I'm it's creator!