Quotes About Writing

I am a writer of books in retrospect. I talk in order to understand; I teach in order to learn

A poet never takes notes..you never take notes in a Love Affair.

Talking is a hydrant in the yard and writing is a faucet upstairs in the house. Opening the first takes all the pressure off the second.

The ear is the only true writer and the only true reader. I know people who read without hearing the sentence sounds and they were the fastest readers. Eye readers we call them. They get the meaning by glances. But they are bad readers because they miss the best part of what a good writer puts into his work.

A poem begins with a lump in the throat

I've given offense by saying I'd as soon write free verse as play tennis with the net down.

Modern poets talk against business, poor things, but all of us write for money. Beginners are subjected to trial by market.

The ear is the only writer and the only true reader.

No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. –

I thought, 'There are a lot of poets who have the courage to look into the abyss, but there are very few who have the courage to look happiness in the face and write about it,' which is what I wanted to be able to do.

When you finish a poem, it clicks shut like the top of a jewel box, but prose is endless. I haven't experienced an awful lot of clicking shut!

I would give them (aspiring writers) the oldest advice in the craft: Read and write. Read a lot. Read new authors and established ones, read people whose work is in the same vein as yours and those whose genre is totally different. You've heard of chain-smokers. Writers, especially beginners, need to be chain-readers. And lastly, write every day. Write about things that get under your skin and keep you up at night.

And I wrote you. Volumes. Volumes.

A creative writing teacher at San Jose State used to say about clichés: 'Avoid them like the plague.' Then he'd laugh at his own joke. The class laughed along with him, but I always thought clichés got a bum rap. Because, often, they're dead-on. But the aptness of the clichéd saying is overshadowed by the nature of the saying as a cliché.

It's often a matter of sitting in front of the computer and worrying. It's what writing comes down to--worrying that things aren't going to work out.

I see the creative process as a necessarily thievish undertaking. Dig beneath a beautiful piece of writing..and you will find all manner of dishonor. Creating means vandalizing the lives of other people, turning them into unwilling and unwitting participants. You steal their desires, their dreams, pocket their flaws, their suffering. You take what does not belong to you. You do this knowingly.

I see a creative process as a necessarily thievish undertaking. Dig beneath a beautiful piece of writing, Monsieur Boustouler, and you will find all manner of dishonor. Creating means vandalizing the lives of other people, turning them into unwilling and unwitting participants. You steal their desires, their dreams, pocket their flaws, their suffering. You take what does not belong to you. You do this knowingly.

Sad stories make good books.

Galilah sebuah tulisan yang indah, Monsieur Boustouler, dan anda akan menemukan berbagai aksi tidak terhormat

Baginya, kata-kata yang tertulis di halaman buku hanyalah serangkaian kode acak, tidak terpecahkan, misterius.

Kata-kata adalah pintu rahasia dan akulah pemegang kuncinya.

And I wrote you. You did? Oh, volumes, he said. Your friend Rumi would have envied my production. Then he laughed again, uproariously this time, as though he was both startled at his own boldness and embarrassed by what he let on.

Dig beneath a beautiful piece of writing [...] and you will find all manner of dishonor.

Maybe you're one of those people who writes poems, but rarely reads them. Let me put this as delicately as I can: If you don't read, your writing is going to suck.