Quotes About Writing

Literature itself is a species of code. You line up symbols and create a simulacrum of life.

Writing is a mixed blessing. We, who are addicted, berate ourselves and feel guilty when we don't write and at the same time put it off and hunt for diversions. Why? Because the this that makes us the happiest is also tedious, hard and frustrating. Writing makes us crazy; not writing even crazier.

side. When she tries to explain her passion for it he reminds her how Anthony Trollope wrote all his books after a hard day's work at the Post Office.

Ma ancora una volta si ripete che l'unico passato reale è quello che perdura nella memoria e che l'unica perdurabile memoria è la scrittura. [...] Forse la letteratura, forse la mia letteratura, rettifica, non svolge altra missione che quella di perfezionare il passato affinché l'avvenire si riprometta di non essere da meno (196).

Write quickly and you will never write well; write well, and you will soon write quickly.

If I don't write it, no one will ever understand the indomitable courage under fire of those three Americans. And that would be the biggest tragedy of all.

To pen a new history, one written in fire. And

I love telling stories for a living. The process of writing has its frustrations, but also its joys (there's no high like typing "The End.") The research is incredible. I love meeting other authors. I love working on something that's purely mine. But the best part is the idea that I kept somebody up past their bedtime, or made them miss their train stop. As a lifelong addict of story, it makes me happy to think that my work might hit other people the way books hit me.

What you are saying and the way you are saying it are very closely linked. I discovered that I always had to let the book I was writing find its own style. Only in that way can you be sure that you are doing the right thing by your subject matter. It's a strange feeling -- as if the book has a life of its own.

In the very books in which philosophers bid us scorn fame, they inscribe their names

It's a feature of our age that if you write a work of fiction, everyone assumes that the people and events in it are disguised biography -- but if you write your biography, it's equally assumed you're lying your head off.

A word after a word after a word is power.

The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read. Not by any other person, and not even by yourself at some later date. Otherwise you begin excusing yourself. You must see the writing as emerging like a long scroll of ink from the index finger of your right hand; you must see your left hand erasing it.

Perhaps I write for no one. Perhaps for the same person children are writing for when they scrawl their names in the snow.

After a year or two of keeping my head down and trying to pass myself off as a normal person, I made contact with the five other people at my university who were interested in writing; and through them, and some of my teachers, I discovered that there was a whole subterranean Wonderland of Canadian writing that was going on just out of general earshot and sight.

Instead of this, I tell what I hope will pass as truth. A blunt thing, not lovely. The truth is seldom welcome, especially at dinner, though I am good at what I do. My trade is courage and atrocities. I look at them and do not condemn. I write things down the way they happened, as near as can be remembered. I dont ask why, because it is mostly the same. Wars happen because the ones who start them think they can win.

I write in the morning, I walk in the afternoon and I read in the evening. It's a very easy, lovely life.

When I say "work" I only mean writing. Everything else is just odd jobs.

Few pleasures are as basic and satisfying as hearing a good story-unless it's the pleasure of writing one.

You won't forget that," Claire assured her. "I like things written down," Tabitha mumbled. "Then you've got them for good.

Honestly, Tabitha, the sooner your novel is written and published the better," Claire said crispl, seeing Barney was made uncomfortable by these comments. "No more talking about Barney's faint. He's better now – that's the main thing." "Ok- let's talk about funerals," Tabitha replied at once.

I believe that books must go through a fairly slow birthing process...

I don't think I'm essentially interested in children's books. I'm interested in writing, and in pictures. I'm interested in people and in children because they are people.

I think of my feather pen as something magical that still belongs to a wing. All I need is paper, ink, and the courage to let wild words soar.