Quotes About Writing

"Fool!" said my muse to me, "look in thy heart, and write."

Thus, with child to speak, and helpless in my throes, biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite: Fool! said my muse to me, look in thy heart, and write.

One thing I knew about the novelist's task: when in doubt, write; when empty, write; when afraid, write. Nothing is more impenetrable than the blank page. The blank page is the void, the absence of sense and feeling, the white light of literary death.

All writers are insecure, the male ones especially. It's well known. Why else would they spend so much time on make-believe? They're only happy in their imaginary worlds, because that's where they're in charge - where they're God. Did you know that Hemingway's mother dressed him as a girl until he was six years old?" I was not offended by Claudia's glib psychological theory. Like many glib psychological theories, it struck me as fundamentally correct.

To rehearse imaginary conversations on paper is called literature. To do so out loud is called madness.

Politics and the English Language," George Orwell concluded with six emphatic rules, including "never use a long word where a short one will do" and "never use the passive where you can use the active.

The idea came to me complete from start to finish – a most unusual occurrence, as any writer will tell you, for ordinarily a story has to be struggled with, changed around and mixed up.

He loved his family, his friends, his writing, his painting; he knew their flaws, but they neither surprised nor embittered him.

One cannot underestimate boredom as an incentive to write.

I will have to learn how to survive them, and perhaps writing is a good means of survival. A way of not forgetting the ones who have disappeared, of continuing a dialogue.

C'est lui qui reprend la parole : et vous ? Vous allez écrire sur cette histoire, n'est-ce pas ? Vous n'allez pas pouvoir vous en empêcher. Je répète que je n'écris jamais sur ma vie, que je suis un romancier. Il sourit : encore un de vos mensonges, pas vrai ? Je souris en retour.

Au fond, je n'écris que pour retrouver la belle sensation du soleil luisant entre les omoplates d'un garçon étendu, ventre et visage contre le sable, dans août qui s'en va.

Las palabras son complicadas. Apenas he hablado en mi vida. Escribo «en mi vida», como si ya estuviera muerto. En el fondo, es verdad. Es la pura y única verdad. Hace mucho tiempo queme siento muerto. Hago como si siguiera viviendo. Mi sentencia está en suspenso, eso es todo.

Oui, sa seule présence aurait suffi à m'éloigner du temps passé et à me rendre fort. Au fond, c'est pour elle et elle seule que j'écris, pour faire semblant, pour me tromper, pour me convaincre qu'elle est encore à m'attendre, où qu'elle soit. Et qu'elle entend tout ce que j'ai à lui dire. Écrire me fait vivre à deux.

It's always been difficult for me to speak and express my innermost thoughts. I prefer to write. When I sit down and write, words grow very docile, they come and feed out of my hand like little birds, and I can do almost what I want with them; whereas when I try to marshal them in open air, they fly away from me.

J'ai fait de ma fille un être de papier. J'ai tous les soirs transformé mon bureau en théâtre d'encre où se jouaient encore ses aventures inventées.

The vigor I lacked for physical activities became incandescent when, pen in hand, I filled those pages with invented stories. Sometimes they were intimately about me – family tales, parental exploits – sometimes they became horrific stories sprinkled with torture, death, and reunion: crazy games and tear-soaked sagas.

Of all the ways of acquiring books, writing them oneself is regarded as the most praiseworthy method. — Walter Benjamin, "Unpacking My Library

The solution to entrapment in the narcissistic hothouse of self is to not relinquish autobiographical writing, but to expand the self by bringing one's curiosity to interface with more and more history and the present world.

To be a writer is a monstrously arrogant act. It presumes that you should be listened to for pages on end... But there is much in the culture to clip the wings of arrogance, mute assertion, and encourage speedy consensus.

I have also time on my hands to correct my opinions, and polish my periods;

No one can expect to write well who will not first take the risk of writing badly.

I hear you're a writer,' said 2040..."What are you writing about?' Not liking to discuss my writing with strangers, I had been privately auditioning possible conversation stoppers, but I didn't think that I would ever have the nerve to use one. But now, in the most awkward of situations, it seemed appropriate. 'Actually, I'm writing a biography,' I responded casually. 'About a man in Alaska who makes foie gras from penguins.

A good book isn't written, it's rewritten.