Quotes About Writing

I had to ask. "Do you really think everything I write down is about you?" Thomas said, "Well, this next bit had better be. I insist." It is very bad for Thomas's character when he gets his own way all the time. That's why I'm going to omit the next bit. If he has forgotten it in fifty years or so, too bad for him. I won't have.

I loved getting my M. B. A., and I really enjoyed being an accountant and financial analyst before I quit my day job twenty-five years ago to write full time. I just liked writing more…plus, I knew even then that as a full-time writer, I'd get plenty of chances to do business-type stuff, while as an accountant, I probably wouldn't get a lot of opportunities to write about dragons.

You can't put much on paper before you betray your secret self, try as you will to keep things civil.

Maybe being oneself is an acquired taste. For a writer it's a big deal to bow--or kneel or get knocked down--to the fact that you are going to write your own books and not somebody else's. Not even those books of the somebody else you thought it was your express business to spruce yourself up to be.

Not erotic life, but the pleasure of the mind filling like the lower chamber of an hourglass with the slow-moving grains of a perfect day—sky, carnations, walking, reading, writing, Toasted Cheese, the presence of another who wishes to be so still, so silent too.

I need solitude for my writing; not like a hermit—that wouldn't be enough—but like a dead man.

It's a little bit in the genes because my brother is a journalist and my father was a sports writer.

Humans need each other for equilibrium and support. But writers must pull aside to take a quiet walk alone, not just for the sake of serenity but to hear the Voice inside. That is how the storyteller connects with with others--listen, write, share.

While writing the first draft is an exercise in shutting down all of the things we think we know so that the story features come tumbling out, the revision is the end of the joy ride. We pull on the gloves and sort of poke around inside the body. Is that a tumor? Will that limb need amputation? I nearly second-guessed myself into heart failure while learning to self-edit.

The conflict each day is whether to immerse in books or writing. I can't do one without the other, but I can't do both at the same time. It is the writer's paradox.

The passion for the story is the wind in your narrative sails. Begin at the heart. We must hear the heartbeat of the story. Love your characters into existence.

You have a story in there, Lucy," she said, touching my head. "Or a character, a place, a poem, a moment in time. When you find it, you will write it. Word after word after word after word," she whispered.

Out of our writer mouths Will come clouds Rising to the sky Dropping rain words below. And when the clouds leave The sun will shine down word After word After word Planting our stories in the earth. —Russell

You will have a story in there. . . or a character, a place, a poem, a moment in time. When you find it, you will write it. Word after word after word after word.

Sometimes, what people choose to write down on paper is more important than what they say." Caleb didn't know what Sarah meant. But I knew. I wrote in my journal every night. And when I read what I had written, I could see myself there, clearer than when I looked in the mirror. I could see all of us: Papa, who couldn't always say the things he felt; Caleb, who said everything; and Sarah, who didn't know that she had changed us all.

I, myself, write to change my life, to make it come out the way I want it to. But other people write for other reasons: to see more closely what it is they are thinking about, what they may be afraid of. Sometimes writers write to solve a problem, to answer their own question. All these reasons are good reasons. And that is the most important thing I'll ever tell you. Maybe it is the most important thing you'll ever hear. Ever.

Writing... is ... brave. You are brave.

This is important to writing. . . that is, it is important to my own writing. This. . . is landscape! Mine. This dirt came from the prairie where I was a child. I played in it, dug in it, planted in it, and walked over it. It is where I began. And all my writing begins with a landscape such as this. A place.

Outlines are silly. Once you write the outline, there's no reason to write the story. You write to participate . . . to find out what is going to happen!

You were given the amazing ability to create universes out of twenty six letters and you're going to the mall? Are you nuts?

You're going to be something, you and that language you speak on paper.

And sometimes what you see is so deep in your head you're not even sure of what you're seeing. But when it's down there on paper, and you look at it, really look, you'll see the way things are.

Yes, after every book is finished I decide it is the last one, and then I get an idea in my head and it germinates and before I know it I've started typing and we are off again.

Writers write to discover what they have to say bringing to consciousness what they already know. It is the same with speech: speak to discover what you want to say. Sculpt, correct, refine, and redirect your thoughts on the fly as you speak. Authentic speech includes lively editing as part of the process.