Quotes About Writing

Now, writing every day, and being paid for it and encouraged to do it, it was as if, in the midst of the clich?d dark and stormy night, I found the magical inn, its windows golden lit, and Summer was due to start tomorrow. I can only work at one thing well. Deprive me of that, and my "back-up plan," even now, will be the empty, stormy, darkened heath -- where, incidentally, even unpublished, somehow I'll still be writing.

Some writers, of course, simply write, as they feel they are driven to do, by outer/inner inspirations. If, after the work is written and, hopefully, published, others respond -- that is the Champagne. But we, or some of us, don't write for the Champagne. We write because we write.

I must suppose that reading wonderful writers may, inadvertently, teach an avid reader a great deal -- not only about life and other matters, but about how to write. Therefore doubtless I have benefited from frequent immersions in the glowing genius of others. It would be nice to think so. (I do actually think so). But to improve my skills will never be the prompting force of my reading -- that's just literary lust.

I hardly ever work from a synopsis -- I find they act like chains.

Genre categories are irrelevant. I dislike them, but I do not have the casting vote. Writing is writing and stories are stories. Perhaps the only true genres are fiction and non-fiction. And even there, who can be sure?

Never be afraid of a cliché, if it expresses what you wish to say.

I held out my book. It was precious to me, as were all the things I'd written; even where I despised their inadequacy there was not one I would disown. Each tore its way from my entrails. Each had shortened my life, killed me with its own special little death.

An angel writing in a book of gold.

And as we mean to be very powerful writers, as well as every thing else that is desirable, power is never seen to so much advantage as when it goes about a thing carelessly; you like to see a light horseman, who seems as if he could abolish you with a passing cut, and not a great heavy fellow, who looks as if he should tumble down in case of missing you, or a little red staring busy body, who would be obliged to wield his sword two-handed, and kill himself first with exertion.

It is much, much worse to receive bad news through the written word than by somebody simply telling you, and I'm sure you understand why. When somebody simply tells you bad news, you hear it once, and that's the end of it. But when bad news is written down, whether in a letter or a newspaper or on your arm in felt tip pen, each time you read it, you feel as if you are receiving the bad news again and again.

Dead women tell no tales. Sad men write them down.

Writing is a dying form. One reads of this every day.

I write storys to entertain not to be the best

Never, under any circumstances, let the Virginian wolfsnake near a typewriter.

Young writers should read books past bedtime and write things down in notebooks when they are supposed to be doing something else.

I am a writer and comparing things is part of my occupation. Over the years I've learned to compare almost anything to almost anything else. I can compare the pencil I am using to write these words (and these words, and these and these) to my own life, because it is sometimes sharp and sometimes dull, and because it is getting shorter and shorter the more I use it, and because when I try to erase things you can still see the marks they left behind.

All good writing is like this. It is why a favorite book feels like an old friend and a new acquaintance at the same time, and the reason a favorite author can be a familiar figure and a mysterious stranger all at once.

We must read mysterious literature, and be as bewildered by it as we are by the world, and we should write down our ideas, turning our stories, as if by magic, into literature.

It is much, much worse to receive bad news through the written word than by somebody simply telling you, and I'm sure you understand why. When somebody simply tells you bad news, you hear it once, and that's the end of it. But when bad news is written down, whether in a letter or a newspaper or on your arm in felt tip pen, each time you read it, you feel as if you are receiving the news again and again.

Grammar is the greatest joy in life, don't you find?

and to never, under any circumstances, let the Virginian Wolfsnake near a typewriter.

I can compare the pencil I am using to write these words (and these words, and these and these) to my own life, because it is sometimes sharp and sometimes dull, because it is getting shorter and shorter the more I use it, and because even when I try to erase things you can still see the marks they left behind.

take either forty-eight or eighty-four pages to

Dear Mr. Snicket, I would like to be a writer when I grow up, but my dad wants me to be a dentist. Help! - Troubled In Tacoma Dear Ms. Troubled, Take extensive notes on your father's behavior. A man who pressured other people into dentistry will be a wonderful character for your first book. With all due respect, LS