Quotes About Writing

Writing is not the voice's shadow but the tracks of its steps. It is only thanks to writing that we can listen to the ancient Greeks and Egyptians even today, that we can hear their voices as full of life as if they had just spoken. My friend, only writing has the power to move a voice through time, and make it as immortal as the gods.

Not all popular novelists are good, but all good novelists are, sooner or later, popular.

I don't write a quick draft and then revise; instead, I work slowly page by page, revising and polishing.

We are fictioneers.

Give the narrative a lighter tone than you think it deserves, dear boy, lighter than you think you can bear to give it, he instructed before I began to write, because you won't find the truth of life in morbidity, only in hope.

If you have to pay the bills, and you write something you're not proud of, use a pen-name for that.

Toda vida es una novela. La escribimos a medida que la vivimos.

Give the narrative a lighter tone than you think it deserves, dear boy, lighter than you think that you can bear to give it," he instructed before I began to write, "because you won't find the truth of life in morbidity, only in hope.

He said, "Sometimes it takes a lot of distance to be able to fold a piece of your life into a work of fiction.

By all those tells, he wrote his anxiety and his guilt as clearly as if he had composed his confession on a blackboard with a stick of chalk.

As a writer, Bibi, you could be a doctor of the soul.

I'm no John Grisham or Thomas Pynchon

The writer that you are, I guess you're used to being a kind of dictator, telling the characters in your stories what to do.

To create good fiction, you have to like people enough to want to write about the human condition—but close yourself alone in a room for a large part of your life to get the job done right.

Writing novels seems like a glamorous and exciting occupation, although in reality I suspect that it's a lot less glamorous than professional wrestling and only marginally more exciting than being a librarian.

earned him in excess of twenty million dollars.

Sometimes it takes a lot of distance to be able to fold a piece of your life into a work of fiction.

Writing isn't a source of pain. It's psychic chemotherapy. It reduces your psychological tumors and relieves your pain.

I still love the sound of breaking, the tearing of the page

Agents don't sell books, good writing does. Plotting and characterization are what interest an editor. Agents negotiate contracts, but they don't sell books.

Prawda ma swoje strony uderzajÄ…ce, które siÄ™ chwyta, gdy siÄ™ ma talent. - Tak, gdy siÄ™ ma talent. Ale gdy ktoÅ› nie ma? - Gdy nie ma, nie powinien pisa?.

Nowadays people rush into print before they've even finished the proof.

It's plain to you that at the time I write this, I'm not dead. But maybe by the time you read it.

Broadcast on, speech: – to prepare. The right length. Know when to stop. Time it. Write it out word for word. Make it sound as if extempore & from the heart. So write for reading, – to be spoken. Slower than ordinary conversation. Go slow. Speak out of your own experience, a picture in words, – you are painting a picture. You must be absolutely sincere. A little humour if possible. Some detail the audience does not know & some details they know.... Today