Quotes About Writing

Writing always came naturally to me. It was like speaking, but easier. Actually, a lot easier.

Prologue When I began writing this story, I thought I had some idea of what it was about. I was wrong. In my life writing I've discovered that there are times when a story, like architecture, is carefully designed, erected, and furnished. Then there are tales that take their own way, and I find myself being dragged along after them like a white-knuckled water skier behind a speedboat.

When I began writing this story, I thought I had some idea of what it was about. I was wrong. In my life writing I've discovered that there are times when a story, like architecture, is carefully designed, erected, and furnished. Then there are tales that take their own way, and I find myself being dragged along after them like a white-knuckled water skier behind a speedboat.

anyone can open a book. Not everyone can appreciate the beauty of the writing.

We write by the light of every story we have ever read.

If you want to write, you can. Fear stops most people from writing, not lack of talent, whatever that is. Who am I? What right have I to speak? Who will listen to me if I do? You're a human being, with a unique story to tell, and you have every right. If you speak with passion, many of us will listen. We need stories to live, all of us. We live by story. Yours enlarges the circle.

People often ask me how I make things funny. I don't make things funny.

You just kind of have faith. If that sounds kind of mystical, it's because I really don't know how it works, but I trust that it does. I try to write the way I read, in order to find out what happens next.

At the risk of appearing disingenuous, I don't really think of myself as 'writing humor.' I'm simply reporting on the world I observe, which is frequently hilarious.

I never worry about people not taking my work seriously as a result of the humor. In the end, the comic's best trick is the illusion that comedy is effortless. That people imagine what he's doing is easy is an occupational hazard.

I have to have a character worth caring about. I tend not to start writing books about people I don't have a lot of sympathy for because I'm just going to be with them too long.

This book is dedicated to: Hudson's Bay Scotch Kent Cigarettes and Yuban Coffee without which it might never have been written.

You will see at precisely what moment the writer ceases to think of his character as an instrument to be manipulated and think of him as someone with whom he has fallen in love. For it is always, must always be, a matter of love.

Sometimes, at night, in bed, before I fall asleep, I think about a poem I might write, someday, about my heart, says the heart.

Sometimes, at night, in bed, before I fall asleep, I think about a poem I might write, someday, about my heart, says the heart. — Richard Siken, from "The Language of the Birds," War of the Foxes (Copper Canyon Press, 2015)

A woman seldom writes her Mind, but in her Postscript.

You have to be able to roll your eyes up into your skull, down the inside of the back of your head, up your jawbone, and into the sockets again. That's how the writers wrote the character, and the producers have too much integrity to alter the conception.

is writing that does what only literature can do: transport you to another time and place and acquaint you with emotions and sensations that you otherwise would never feel.

It is writing that does what only literature can do: transport you to another time and place and acquaint you with emotions and sensations that you otherwise would never feel.

I'm a woofer, not a tweeter; a writer, not a telegrapher; an essayist, not an aphorist.

Writing is essential to learning. One cannot be educated and yet unable to communicate one's ideas in written form.

In her room at the prow of the houseWhere light breaks, and the windows are tossed with linden,My daughter is writing a story.

They think the way to be a poet is to wear funny clothes and write sideways on the page.

If you haven't written a novel by the time you're forty you never will!