Quotes About Writing

Aunt Lovey used to tell me that if I wanted to be a writer, I needed a writer's voice. 'Read,' she'd say, 'and if you have a writer's voice, one day it will shout out, 'I can do that too!

I can't exactly say why I've chosen to write about the things that I am writing about. There are doubtless better stories from my life that I am missing, events and escapades I am not wise enough to know were important. If heaven is tolerant and writers are allowed (bunch of liars that they are), I wonder if they gather for coffee to ponder the prose they should have written instead. p 179

I consider Anne of Green Gables to be a mentor, Jane Austen to be a writing hero, and the Bard a fellow name freak like myself.

words on paper are not the same as blood on hands.

Writers have no real area of expertise. They are merely generalists with a highly inflamed sense of punctuation.

I don't know enough about the lower classes to write about them. I don't feel with them, and that could be regarded as a defect, a limitation of my imagination. I could put myself in their position, but not politically. The idea of writing a story or a book about somebody completely devoid of appreciation of anything I care about is completely foreign to me.

Your literary style reflects your personality.

A lot of writers ... sit in a log cabin by the lake and put their feet up by the fire in the silence and write. If you can have that that's all very well, but the true writer will learn to write anywhere -- even in prison.

I was sophisticated enough to know that the written word is no mirror of the writer's character, that the amateur, though a selfless angel, may show himself a pompous ass, while the professional, a monster of ego, can convince you in a phrase that he has the innocence of a child. I

Breaking records is not something you expect to be doing. That's like a sports thing, it's not usually a comedy and writing thing.

One day I was speeding along at the typewriter, and my daughter - who was a child at the time - asked me, "Daddy, why are you writing so fast?" And I replied, "Because I want to see how the story turns out!

Elk dier en elke schrijver heeft een wapen waarmee hij zich best verdedigen kan

Wie romanschrijver wil worden heeft het de eerste honderd jaar nogal moeilijk.

Wie is nu dichter en wie niet? Gij en ik kunnen het zijn, zonder het misschien zelf te weten! In u kan een verlangen zijn, een vreemde stuwkracht die u naar de pen doet grijpen om neer te schrijven wat ge gezien, gehoord en zeer diep gevoeld hebt. Het moet niet altijd in rijm zijn om kunst te zijn.

What amazes me is that most days feel useless. I don't seem to accomplish anything-just a few pages, most of which don't seem very good. Yet, when I put all those wasted days together, I somehow end up with a book of which I'm very proud.

Hurrah! My story was accepted; and Lowell asked if it was not a translation from the German, it was so unlike most tales. I felt much set up, and my fifty dollars will be very happy money.

Won't teach any more if I can help it; don't like it; and if I can get writing enough can do much better.

Writing is 1 percent inspiration, and 99 percent elimination.

For two extraordinary years I have been working on it - learning to write - but mostly learning how to tell the truth. At first it is quite impossible. You make yourself better than anybody, then worse than anybody, and when you finally come to see you are 'like' everybody - that is the bitterest blow of all to the ego. But in the end it is only the truth, no matter how ugly or shameful, that is right, that fits together, that makes real people, and strangely enough - beauty...

I could write an entertaining novel about rejection slips, but I fear it would be overly long.

I bought a selection of short, romantic fiction novels, studied them, decided that I had found a formula and then wrote a book that I figured was the perfect story. Thank goodness it was rejected.

I've read a lot of first-rate writing, and I have some critical sense; so I know where I stand. I'll never be first rate. I'll improve with practice, I trust, but I haven't got what it takes to reach the top.

Writing is hard work, and don't let anybody tell you otherwise. It's hard on the eyes, the back, the fanny, the disposition and the nail polish.