Quotes About Writing

Speak to your dead. Write for your dead. Tell them a story. What are you doing with this life? Let them hold you accountable. Let them make you bolder or more modest or louder or more loving, whatever it is, but ask them in, listen, and then write. And when war comes -- and make no mistake, it is already here -- be sure you write for the living too. The ones you love, and the ones who are coming for your life. What will you give them when they get there?

If I seem cagey, it is because I am not a liar and hate being considered one, due to an accident of craft. But also, if I tell you the idea, and the description disappoints you, the novel can be lost.

That afternoon, I tried to understand if I had made a choice about what to write. But instead it seemed to me if anyone had made a choice, the novel had, choosing me like I was a door and walking through me out into the world.

To write is to sell a ticket to escape, not from the truth but into it. My job is to make something happen in a space barely larger than the span of your hand, behind your eyes, distilled out of all that I have carried, from friends, teachers, people met on planes, people I have seen only in my mind, all my mother and father ever did, every favorite book, until it meets and distills from you, the reader, something out of the everything it finds in you.

I was spelling out a message that would allow me to talk to myself and to others. The novel that emerged was about things I could not speak of in life, in some cases literally. I would lie, or I would feel a weight on my chest as if someone was sitting there. But when the novel was done, I could read from it. A prosthetic voice.

My favorite travel pastime is writing music, either with my guitar or on my computer.

Most diaries are moans in writing, even when the person writing them is happy.

Her ordinariness, and the fact that she has written so much about it, is what makes her interesting.

But you cannot expect every writer to dwell on human suffering. I think my books do deal with grave issues. People who say they are too positive probably haven't read them.

Let such teach others who themselves excel,And censure freely who have written well.

True Ease in Writing comes from Art, not Chance, As those move easiest who have learn'd to dance.

Stuff the headWith all such reading as was never read:For thee explain a thing till all men doubt it,And write about it, Goddess, and about it.

The mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease.

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,As those move easiest who have learn'd to dance.'Tis not enough no harshness gives offense;The sound must seem an echo to the sense.

While pensive poets painful vigils keep, Sleepless themselves, to give their readers sleep.

I believe no one qualification is so likely to make a good writer, as the power of rejecting his own thoughts.

Tis hard to say, if greater want of skill Appear in writing or in judging ill; But, of the two, less dang'rous is th' offence To tire our patience, than mislead our sense.

And while self-love each jealous writer rules, Contending wits become the sport of fools: But still the worst with most regret commend, For each ill author is as bad a friend. To what base ends, and by what abject ways, Are mortals urg'd through sacred lust of praise! Ah ne'er so dire a thirst of glory boast, Nor in the critic let the man be lost! Good nature and good sense must ever join; To err is human; to forgive, divine.

Authors are partial to their wit

He, who supreme in judgment, as in wit, Might boldly censure, as he boldly writ.

Tis hard to say, if greater want of skill Appear in writing or in judging ill

Ten censure wrong for one who writes amiss

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, As those move easiest who have learn'd to dance.

If Paul did not love the Corinthians, he would walk away from them and let them flounder in their own cesspool of sin. Instead, he is proactive. He confronts, warns, writes, visits, and even humbles himself before them (2 Cor. 2:5-10; 12:21).