Quotes About Writing

In books, as in life, there are no second chances. On second thought: it's the next work, still to be written, that offers the second chance.

I'd love to work with Aaron Sorkin on something. Just the way he writes, he has no fear in writing people that are fiercely intelligent, and I love that.

I don't trust anybody that doesn't do good work. I don't give them any credibility. If they can't write, why should I believe anything they have to say?

For a novelist, no matter what, it's a complete work, even if it's not published. But if you write a screenplay, and it's not performed, then it's a sad and frustrating experience.

I don't know if my work is a concerted effort to make kids sad!

There have always been great defenses of poetry, and I've tried to write mine, and I think all of my work and criticism is a defense of poetry to try and keep something alive in poetry.

My dad would go to work every day and write in a room full of funny people. He enjoyed it. I know great writers who find the process agonising but to me, writing has always been sheer joy.

It is most true, stylus virum arguit, - our style betrays us

You get ideas from daydreaming. You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time. The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we're doing it.

If you don't have the time to read, you don't have the time or the tools to write.

There is perhaps no more obvious vanity than to write of it so vainly.

One should never use exclamation points in writing. It is like laughing at your own joke.

If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don't listen to writers talking about writing or themselves.

The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.

If you are working on a short story for a small online press, don't try to write a serious, world-changing, add-this-to-the-literary-canon masterpiece. Do your best work, but keep it all in perspective. Save the stress for when it is really called for, like facing a two-week deadline to rewrite a novel for a major house.

A novel is something that stands at the end of a lengthy process called writing. It is not a preexisting Platonic form embedded within the writer... I do not have a Boston marathon inside me waiting to get out. The marathon is a peak experience I am rightly entitled to only as the culmination of years of regular training and love of running.

Despite the chronic shortages of almost every good and commodity, there was no shortage of paper, since everyone in the neighborhood was required to write confessions on a periodic basis. Even

I was careful, then, to present myself as just another immigrant, glad to be in the land where the pursuit of happiness was guaranteed in writing, which, when one comes to think about it, is not such a great deal. Now a guarantee of happiness—that's a great deal. But a guarantee to be allowed to pursue the jackpot of happiness? Merely an opportunity to buy a lottery ticket. Someone would surely win millions, but millions would surely pay for it.

I was careful, then, to present myself as just another immigrant, glad to be in the land where the pursuit of happiness was guaranteed in writing, which, when one comes to think about it, is not such a great deal. Now a guarantee of happiness—that's a great deal. But a guarantee to be allowed to pursue the jackpot of happiness? Merely an opportunity to buy a lottery ticket. Someone would surely win millions, but millions would surely pay for it. It

Telling what must not be told is one of the writer's primary tasks. It is also a difficult and dangerous one.

I think of the novelist Haruki Murakami, who compares writing a novel to digging a hole through deep rock to reach a source of water. To access mystery and intuition requires hard work and is a gamble, for there is no guarantee that we will find that source of water.

Writing was entering into fog, feeling my way for a route from this world to the unearthly world of words, a route easier to find on some days than others.

I was careful, then, to present myself as his another immigrant, glad to be in the land where the pursuit of happiness was guaranteed in writing, which, when one comes to think of it, is not such a great deal. Now a guarantee of happiness— that's a great deal. But a guarantee to be allowed to pursue the jackpot of happiness? Merely an opportunity to buy a lottery ticket. Someone will surely win millions, but millions would surely pay for it.

We shared a passion for words, but I preferred the silence of writing while she loved to talk. She