Quotes About Writing

Stein, Sol, Stein on Writing. Perhaps the best book ever written on the overall craft of fiction. Straightforward, practical, easily absorbed.

He wrote short and he wrote often, which tended to obscure the fact that he wrote well. Unless it leads to obscurity, brevity is rarely praised (or employed) in the journals of, ah, serious literary criticism, and frequency is often equated with frivolity.

You know, that idea could be developed into a first-rate little article. Six hundred to seven hundred words, about. The Tyranny of the Wheel, you could call it, with a colored margin of trains and airplanes and ocean liners at top speed—of course liners don't have wheels, but you could do something about that—if I could persuade you, Mr. Wolfe—

A man named Olin Miller has said, "Writing is the hardest way of earning a living, with the possible exception of wrestling alligators.

Nothing corrupts a man so deeply as writing a book; the myriad temptations are overpowering. I wouldn't presume—

He once said that I ride words bareback.

los hombres incapaces de escribir son inofensivos; los capaces, no".

To write a letter is to send a message to the future; to speak of the present with an addressee who is not there, knowing nothing about how that person is (in what spirits, with whom) while we write and, above all, later: while reading over what we have written. Correspondence is the utopian form of conversation because it annihilates the present and turns the future into the only possible place for dialogue.

A ratos preocupado porque llevo muchos meses sin escribir, marcado por el vértigo y la circulación social. Reuniones, fiestas, entretenimientos. Decidido a terminar con esa farsa y sentarme a escribir salga como salga, por fin.

There's another quote on the act of writing letters, have a look: Letter writing is a truly anachronistic genre, a sort of tardy inheritance of the eighteenth century; those who lived at that time believed in the pure truth of the written word. And we? Times have changed; words are lost with ever greater ease; you can see them float on the waters of history; sink, come up again, mixed in by the current with the water hyacinths.

Pero cómo se le va a ocurrir separar el sujeto del verbo con una coma, hombre!

I think, writing-wise, I am probably more of a quilter than a weaver because I just get a little scrap here and a little scrap there and sew them together.

A Supreme Court Justice writing about constitutional theory is like a dog walking on his hind legs; the wonder is not that it is done well but that it is done at all.

The author apologizes for being unable to afford a ghost writer, which explains the lack of a distinctive prose style.

Almost nothing is known about Homer, which explains why so much has been written about him.

A writer who renders the brutal actions of men in excruciating detail, seldom applying the anesthetic of psychology, [Cormac] McCarthy would much rather orate than confide.

El matemático francés Blaise Pascal describió muy bien este problema en su célebre frase: "Lamento haber escrito esta carta tan larga, pero no tenía tiempo para hacerla más corta".

You write with ease to show your breeding,But easy writing's curst hard reading.

It's not Jane Austen, it's not Henry James. But this writer, or writers, well, they're pretty damn good too.

Most writers can write books faster than publishers can write checks!" ~ Richard Curtis ~

Most writers can write books faster than publishers can write checks!

Swoopers write a story quickly, higgledy-piggledy, crinkum-crankum, any which way. Then they go over it again painstakingly, fixing everything that is just plain awful or doesn't work. Bashers go one sentence at a time, getting it exactly right just before they go on to the next one.

Writing is not lying, nor is it theft. It is a journey and search for transparency between one's words and one's soul.

Happiness for me is getting to write about the most important things I know.