Quotes About Writing

Primeval forest,' he said. 'Original forest.' 'Wouldn't you like to build a house here and live alone with your wife?' 'Yes,' he said. 'Have a family and write something-poems and stories.' 'Maybe have four children.' 'It is not permitted,' he said. Then he smiled. 'But this is so far they wouldn't know. It wouldn't matter. Yes, I would like that.

I turned seventy in the Kalahari Desert and defended myself against oafs in the stink and misery of northern Angola. All these trips, ten of them, became books.

Since I will never write the autobiography I once envisioned—volume one, Who I Was; volume two, I Told You So—writing about travel has become a way of making sense of my life

Tonight I write this journal entry on my laptop. Other nights I have handwritten entries in notebooks. Sometimes I jot down notes as I ride home in the cab or wait for an appointment. I want all of this -- everything and everyone -- to stay with me.

This is writing. This is printing. This tells us of all the things we ought to know in the world. And also that we ought to want to know.

That is why I write - to try to turn sadness into longing, solitude into remembrance.

Writing is one of the most solitary activities in the world.

Some books make us dream, others bring us face to face with reality, but what matters most to the author is the honesty with which a book is written.

Writing is easy: just stare at the screen of your computer until a tear drops on your keyboard.

No one can learn to love by following a manual and no one can learn to write by following a course. I'm not telling you to find people with different skills from yourself, because writing is no different from any other activity done with joy and enthusiasm.

Words are tears that have been written down. Tears are words that need to be shed.

Words are tears that have been written down. Tears are words that need to be shed. Without them, joy loses all its brilliance and sadness has no end. Thank you, then, for your tears.

Má»™t vài cu?n sách khi?n chúng ta mÆ¡ má»™ng , má»™t s? khác buá»™c chúng ta ??i m?t vá»›i thá»±c t?, nhÆ°ng Ä'i?u có ý nghÄ©a nh?t ??i vá»›i má»™t nhà v?n Ä'ó là sá»± trung thá»±c, chân thành và cùng vá»›i sá»± chân thành ?y h? vi?t nên cu?n sách c?a mình.

If you start to revise before you've reached the end, you're likely to begin dawdling with the revisions and putting off the difficult task of writing.

It is the highest reward when a writer hears when a book written in doubt and solitude, has reached a human heart with a deeper meaning than even the writer had been aware of, as she wrote. It is something extra, the unexpected return.

Nunca has pensado escribir?, tú hablas en poesía. ¿Lo sabes?

If you put anger in the writing, then it's like an actor crying on stage. The audience will not cry with the actor and in some way inure itself against the emotion.

I would say about 80% of my writing (including posts and blogs), has to do with unresolved anger and that's just fine with me

Each book is, in a sense, an argument with myself, and I would write it, whether it is ever published or not.

Nothing so sharpens the thought process as writing down one's arguments. Weaknesses overlooked in oral discussion become painfully obvious on the written page.

Words are so often used in the opposite sense, as a screen of diversion. It's the struggle towards truthfulness which is the same whether one is writing a poem, a novel or an argument.

I don't really have those kinds of intentions when I write a scene. I try to follow the internal logic of the fiction, rather than make an argument or an assertion.

It can become an exercise in trying to get the reader to like and admire you instead of an exercise in creative art.

Writing is easy. Just sit in front of a typewriter, open up a vein and bleed it out drop by drop.