Quotes About Writing

A veces tengo la impresión de que escribo para entender la vida

Yo enamoré a mi mujer haciéndole creer que era escritor y al final tuve que hacerme escritor para que se quedase conmigo.

Uno de mis primeros entrevistados fue Roberto Bolaño. Bolaño, que era escritor y chileno, vivía desde hacía mucho tiempo en Blanes, un pueblo costero situado en la frontera entre Barcelona y Gerona, tenía cuarenta y siete años, un buen número de libros a sus espaldas y ese aire inconfundible de buhonero hippie que aqueja a tantos latinoamericanos de su generación exiliados en Europa.

The openness of such networked devices reflects our growing desire to construct writing in a way that breaks down the traditional distinctions between the book and such larger forms as the encyclopedia and the library.

when writing tests you should prefer DAMP (Descriptive And Maintainable Procedures) to DRY.

The real joy of writing lies in the opportunity of being able to sacrifice a whole chapter for a single sentence, a complete sentence for a single word...

Any gloss on authors, their character traits or biographies, hides the fact that only bad writing has an author, good writing does not.

All these old ultra-Leftists thwarted (by History), unclear where they are on the Left–Right spectrum, and ending up writing with both hands – from left to right, of course - in the hope of one day painting spaces of freedom for themselves with their toes.

Never lose sight of the fact that writing is a strange, inhuman function, a reflection of the inhumanity of language itself. Through writing, language, which is a domestic species, becomes a wild one again.

In two weeks, despite these notes, I shall no longer believe in what I am experiencing now. One must leave behind a trace of this journey which memory forgets. One must, when this is impossible, write or draw without responding to the romantic solicitations of pain, without enjoying suffering like music, tieing a pen to one's foot if need be, helping the doctors who can learn nothing from laziness.

Le cinéma, c'est l'écriture moderne dont l'encre est la lumière.

Writing is an act of love. If it is not it is only handwriting. It consists in obeying the driving force of plants and trees and in broadcasting sperm far around us. The richness of the world is in its wastefulness.

Il y a dans le dessin une très grande jouissance. L'écriture, c'est le dessin noué autrement. (...) Et quand je dessine, j'écris, et, peut-être, que quand j'ecris, je dessine.

That is what's important. The life of the line. When I draw, it's like tied and untied writing. My lines can be vivid or dead. The drawing is beautiful if the line is alive. A line is in danger of dying all along. My method of drawing is very much like jazz improvisation. I improvise with the lines and the colors. (...) There's great joy in drawing. Writing is drawing in different apparel, and drawing is another way of writing. And when I draw, I write. Perhaps when I write, I draw.

The lamp I am writing by is deer fat poured into a turtle shell with a strip of my old city trousers for a wick.

Good writers borrow, great writers steal. —T. S. Eliot (but possibly stolen from Oscar Wilde)

You're only as successful as the last book you published, and you're only as good as the next book you're writing. So shut up and write.

I started writing to please myself, a story I would like to read, and that is still true.

But I do not use the Internet, because I know myself too well. Once I got on the Internet I would get so distracted, I'd be basically giving one of my books to the Internet because I wouldn't be writing. I'd be playing on that machine. Interview by Associated Press Nov 03, 2010

But the operation of writing implies that of reading as its dialectical correlative and these two connected acts necessitate two distinct agents. It is the joint effort of author and reader, which brings upon the scene that concrete and imaginary object which is the work of the mind. There is no art except for and by others.

La función del escritor consiste en obrar de modo que nadie pueda ignorar el mundo y que nadie pueda ante el mundo decirse inocente

No se es escritor por haber elegido decir ciertas cosas, sino por la forma en que se digan

I had thought out this sentence, at first it had been a small part of myself. Now it was inscribed on the paper, it took sides against me. I didn't recognize it any more. I couldn't conceive it again. It was there, in front of me; in vain for me to trace some sign of its origin. Anyone could have written it. But I ... I wasn't sure I wrote it. The letters glistened no longer, they were dry. That had disappeared too; nothing was left but their ephemeral spark.

I must write. If I stop writing my life will have been an abject failure. It is that already to other people. But it could be an abject failure to myself. I will not have earned death.