Quotes About Writing

I heard so many stories from Gaomi's peasants that I had an irrepressible urge to write them down. Today, Gaomi's peasants know that they have become famous around the world through my writings, but I think they are a little puzzled by this.

A writer writes what he knows, in ways that are natural to him.

As a child who grew up in a grassy field, enjoying little formal education, I know virtually nothing about literary theories and have had to rely solely upon my own experiences and intuitive understanding of the world to write.

No person writes to win awards.

Writing is like prostitution. First you do it for love, and then for a few close friends, and then for money.

Writing is a little bit like prostitution. First you do it for love. Then you do it for a few friends. Then you do it for money.

That any gentleman should always keep In stern control this writing itch we're seized with; That he must hold in check the great impatience We feel to give the world these idle pastimes; For, through this eagerness to show our works, 'Tis likely we shall cut a foolish figure.

All that is not prose is verse; and all that is not verse is prose.

Anyone may be an honorable man, and yet write verse badly.

I might, by chance, write something just as shoddy; But then I wouldn't show it to everybody.

She said in an interview with Polly Devlin in 1983 that the pseudonym was essential because, 'for a woman to read a book, let alone write one, was viewed with alarm; I would have been banned from every respectable house.

The thought of writing was always pleasant, but the process was painful

Writing is a cop-out. An excuse to live perpetually in fantasy land, where you can create, direct and watch the products of your own head. Very selfish.

People don't write their own endings'" he said. "Well, I'm planning on writing mine.

The 'I' [Je] who writes is alien to her own writing at every word because this 'I' uses a language that is alien to her; this 'I' [Je] experiences what is alien to her since this 'I' [Je] cannot be un ecrivain. J/e poses the ideological and historical question of feminine subjects.

McGough: I'm sorry. I'm afraid I've caught poetry. Mr Bones: Oh really? Well, don't worry, sir - I used to suffer from short stories. McGough: Really? When? Mr Bones: Oh, once upon a time ...

When they tote up our contribution," Luke once said, "all that can be claimed for us is that we took 'fuck' out of the oral tradition and wrote it plain.

In the beginning, poetry rather than prose was the dominant form, for poetry was the normal expression of the literary impulse before writing came to confuse culture. Long after the book appeared, literature was heard rather than read.

Because in our way of writing numbers the position of an integer determines the quantity it represents, the principle involved is called positional notation.

I am a little pencil in the hand of a writing God who is sending a love letter to the world.

Anne Frank wasn't a star pupil. She was a likeable child. Sometimes I'd bump into her in the mornings on her way to school. Then she'd sometimes tell me stories that she'd made up together with her father. They were always really funny stories. She told me a lot about her father, but not much about her mother and sister. I also knew that she wanted to be a writer. Maybe she would have been…

writing - like any art - is so damned personal that there really isn't a right way to do it. You do what works for you; what matters is getting the words on the paper. Sure, if you hear advice, and it works, then excellent. But, if it doesn't, you have to realize that perhaps nothing is wrong with you. You don't jive with the advice.

My novel] took up the sweetest part of my mind and the rarest part of my imagination; it was like being in love and better. All day long when I was busy [...], I had my unfinished novel personified almost as a secret companion and accomplice following me like a shadow wherever I went, whatever I did.

Pour écrire l'histoire de sa vie, il faut d'abord avoir vécu ; aussi n'est-ce pas la mienne que j'écris.