Quotes About Writing

You philosophers are lucky men. You write on paper and paper is patient. Unfortunate Empress that I am, I write on the susceptible skins of living beings.

Letters are signs of things, symbols of words, whose power is so great that without a voice they speak to us the words of the absent; for they introduce words by the eye, not by the ear.

Writing a poem is a lesson in the truest empathy. And to truly have empathy is to truly know power, or at least the only kind of power I'm interested in.

I'm aware of the mystery around us, so I write about coincidences, premonitions, emotions, dreams, the power of nature, magic.

Let us never underestimate the power of a well-written letter.

I have hated words and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right.

Great fiction can often present moral messages with greater power and clarity than instructional writing - since literature, after all, penetrates not just the intellect, but the imagination.

There, stacked high on his desk, was a tower of paper. Thick slabs of manuscript. Slush. Unsolicited, unagented, unloved. This was where dreams came to die. Book proposals, cover letters, entire manuscripts – they gathered like so much detritus on the desks of publishers everywhere.

And if the book is too silly, I find that it's often because the writer doesn't really have anything to say - or there are no values. Or because the whole book is just a lead-up to a trick at the end. If you read the end first, you may have much less patience for wasting time with that kind of book. Even a well-written book can be silly and a waste of time.

But it's one thing to feel that a book can speak beyond its particular time and place to something universal, and another to ignore the circumstances and time in or about which it was written.

Connelly writes, "As long as there is paper, people will write, secretly, in small rooms, in the hidden chambers of their minds, just as people whisper the words they're forbidden to speak aloud." In

We'd both already read several novels by Tóibín: The Master and The Story of Night and The Blackwater Lightship.

Don't look back until you've written an entire draft, just begin each day from the last sentence you wrote the preceding day. This prevents those cringing feelings, and means that you have a substantial body of work before you get down to the real work which is all in ... the edit." [ Ten rules for writing fiction (part two) , The Guardian, 20 February 2010]

You know that sickening feeling of inadequacy and over-exposure you feel when you look upon your own empurpled prose? Relax into the awareness that this ghastly sensation will never, ever leave you, no matter how successful and publicly lauded you become. It is intrinsic to the real business of writing and should be cherished.

It is better to write a bad first draft than no first draft at all.

When you write, you can hide behind your words. When you talk, you are up front, like the clown in the midway booth; and passersby can bean you with a ball.

Ik schrijf, hoewel ik weet dat men alleen één woord schrijven kan door er tienduizend over te slaan. Maar deze tienduizend blijven zweven als modder in een glas vuil water. Kijkt men er boven in, dan verduisteren zij het neerslag dat op die bodem ligt. Ik zie wat ik geschreven heb alleen maar door de troebele mist van dat wat geen gestalte heeft aangenomen. Begrijpt men nu, waarom het door mijzelf beschreven papier zulk een verontreinigde indruk op mij maakt?

Never use the word, 'very.' It is the weakest word in the English language; doesn't mean anything. If you feel the urge of 'very' coming on, just write the word, 'damn,' in the place of 'very.' The editor will strike out the word, 'damn,' and you will have a good sentence.

Dip your pen into your arteries and write.

In his terrific book, Adventures in the Screen Trade, William Goldman wrote that the best approach to a good scene is to leave out the beginning and the end (the parts readers can readily guess or that matter least)

You may outgun me, outman me, and outspend me. But I'm a writer. I will outplot you.

O white-robed Angel, guide my timorous hand to write as on a lofty rock with iron pen the words of truth, that all who pass may read.

The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels and God, and at liberty when of Devils and Hell, is because he was a true poet and of the Devil's party without knowing it.

It's not that [writers] are pompous jerks. We are insecure. We feel like we're fading away in this vast sea of scriveners.