Quotes About Writing

When I'm writing about myself, I write out of a strong urge not to protect myself. When I feel ego or self justification or defensiveness creeping in or a wish to make myself look better than I was, I squelch it, if I can. It takes vigilance. Exposing myself is the only way to go, though. If I'd rather wear veils, I should write fiction.

Hands down, the biggest thrill is to get a letter from a kid saying, I loved your book. Will you write me another one?

Every well-written book is a light for me. When you write, you use other writers and their books as guides in the wilderness.

If you want to be a writer, write a little bit every day. Pay attention to the world around you. Stories are hiding, waiting everywhere. You just have to open your eyes and your heart.

A great reader makes a great writer

He would write and write. He would make wonderful things happen. Some of it would be true. All of it would be true. Most of it would be true.

Well, you know, I've been in so many writing workshops, writing classes, and to the right of me and to the left of me, there's always somebody much more talented than I am. And what I figured out is they're not willing to go through the rejection, which is enormous, and then the compromise that comes with, you know, editing your work. And so I decided a long time ago that I didn't have to be 'talented'; I just had to be persistent, and that that was something I could control. The persistence.

READ. You have no business wanting to be a writer unless you are a reader. You should read fantasies and essays, biographies and poetry, fables and fairy tales. Read, read, read, read, read.

Flora had decided that this was part of the reason her parents had divorced. Not the noise of the writing, but the writing itself. Specifically, the writing of romance. Flora

There are twenty-six letters in all. You will learn each of them, and once you know them, you can mix them as you will, and then use them to form the words of the world and the things of the world. You can write of everything-what is and what was and what might yet be.

My writing tools were my most precious belongings. My best quill pen was made from a raven's feather . . . I was often so poor that I could not pay my mantua-maker, but I always invested in the best ink and parchment. I smoothed it with pumice stone till it was as white and fine as my own skin, ready to absorb the rapid scratching of my quill

As I grew up, I read and loved many fairy-tale retellings and began to think about writing my own reimagining of 'Rapunzel.

Most of us would rather read than write. There is always another article to read, one more source to track down, just a bit more data to gather. But well before you've done all the research you'd like to do, there comes a point when you must start thinking about the first draft of your report.

use roman type and quotation marks.

what do I deserve? Sylvia contests. Why is the woman always expected to give up on life? She's a writer, not a teacher. She can; she does. She is the arrow, not him, nor him, nor him, these men who would have her be charming and quiet, reciting the names of insects in Latin, stirring something at a stove.

Thus, in a real sense, I am constantly writing autobiography, but I have to turn it into fiction in order to give it credibility.

He had promised Leslie that after Christmas he would stay home and fix up the house and plant his garden and listen to music and read books out loud and write only in his spare time.

I had no study in those days, not even a desk or file or bookcase to call mine alone....It might have happened sooner [the writing of work worthy of publication] had I had a room of my own and fewer children, but somehow I doubt it. For as I look back on what I have written, I can see that the very persons who took away my time and space are those who have given me something to say.

Self-censorship can be very damaging to a story. When our chief goal is not to offend someone, we are not likely to write a book that will deeply affect someone.

No," I said primly, I had no intention of being a writer because "I wouldn't want to add another mediocre writer to the world.

There are no guarantees of success, much less of quality. If you don't dare to be a mediocre writer, you'll never be a writer at all.

One of the novels that was hardest for me to write had to deal with the horrible slaughter of war. I almost didn't finish Rebels of the Heavenly Kingdom for just that reason.

For me, a peaceful atmosphere devoid of noise and distractions is absolutely the worst place for poetry, likely to wind me up in a doomed attempt to stare down a blank page. My funny old brain, like those of many poets, has always done its best work sideways, seeking out tricky enjambments and surprising slant rhymes to craft lines capable of pulling their own weight.

I just love the way those old-time authors like Mr. Dickens or George Eliot (who was actually a woman, in case you didn't know) stop smack-dab in the middle of the story and say stuff like, "patient reader," and then give some little side comment.