Quotes About Writing

Jag skriver ner allt det här i blått bläck, så att jag ska minnas att alla ord, inte bara vissa, är skrivna i vatten.

It is absurd, Barthes says, to try to flee from language's assertive nature 'adding to each sentence some little phrase of uncertainty, as if anything that came out of language could make language tremble.' My writing is riddled with such tics of uncertainty. I have no excuse or solution, save to allow myself the tremblings, then go back in later and slash them out. In this way I edit myself into a boldness that is neither native nor foreign to me.

ag skriver ner allt det här i blått bläck, så att jag ska minnas att alla ord, inte bara vissa, är skrivna i vatten.

185. Perhaps this is why writing all day, even when the work feels arduous, never feels to me like "a hard day's work." Often it feels more like balancing two sides of an equation - occasionally quite satisfying, but essentially a hard and passing rain. It, too, kills the time.

I never aimed to give you a talisman, an empty vessel to flood with whatever longing, dread, or sorrow happened to be the day's mood. I wrote it because I had something to say to you.

It is absurd, Barthes says, to try to flee from language's assertive nature by 'adding to each sentence some little phrase of uncertainty, as if anything that came out of language could make language tremble.' My writing is riddled with such tics of uncertainty. I have no excuse or solution, save to allow myself the tremblings, then go back in later and slash them out. In this way I edit myself into a boldness that is neither native nor foreign to me.

Whether your writing is for personal journals or for publication, there are aspects we all share as writers.

Don't say that poetry, my friend, is beautiful or powerful for there is no powerful or beautiful poetry There is poetry that strikes you, secretly with the diseases of writing and schizophrenia, and you rave and your self leaves you for another

Porque escribir, como amar, es hijo de las nubes, que se deshacen si las atrapas.

De ce nu ai spus adev?rul, Mircea? Numai adev?rul nu era de-ajuns? Ai scris pentru bani? Da, pentru asta ai facut-o - acesta este specificul Occidentului, unde c?r?ile se vând pentru voluptate, nu pentru dragoste.

But he knew people and he was head writer for Have Gun Will Travel, and if you took those early Star Treks that we did and put us in a western wardrobe and put us on wagon train going west, we can say the same lines.

I can't write that dreadful hobbity stuff. I just simply... can't.

Putting pen to paper lights more fire than matches ever will

Good writing does not succeed or fail on the strength of its ability to persuade. It succeeds or fails on the strength of its ability to engage you, to make you think, to give you a glimpse into someone else's head.

Journalism equals intellectual male prostitution of speech and writing

In a country like France, so ancient, their history is full of outstanding people, so they carry a heavy weight on their back. Who could write in French after Proust or Flaubert?

Do you like reading? It's the best thing that can happen to you in life. Writing has other implications.

Hay cosas que no pueden decirse, y es cierto. Pero esto que no puede decirse, es lo que se tiene que escribir.

Escribir es defender la soledad en que se está; es una acción que sólo brota desde un aislamiento efectivo, pero desde un aislamiento comunicable, en que, precisamente, por la lejanía de toda cosa concreta se hace posible un descubrimiento de relaciones entre ellas. Pero es una soledad que necesita ser defendida, que es lo mismo que necesitar de justificación. El escritor defiende su soledad, mostrando lo que en ella y únicamente en ella, encuentra.

Lo que diferencia a los géneros literarios unos de otros, es la necesidad de la vida que les ha dado origen. No se escribe ciertamente por necesidades literarias, sino por necesidad que la vida tiene de expresarse.

The writing of autobiography or memoir is comparable to the effect of time on ruins: it works by means of subtraction and selection.

Writing plays the role of ritual when ritual is effective and manages to give those participating or attending the feeling that it reopens time.

Over the course of time, their successive readings will question and enrich it. Thus the work will no longer belong to the author; he will be dispossessed of it. We could even say that the author will no longer belong to himself either—which corresponds to the most modest and ambitious of dreams he is able to formulate and to the wisest and wildest illusion he can maintain: to ignore age and let time run its course. To write is to die a little, but a little less alone.

Write like yourself, only more so.