Quotes About Writing

But then, I'm not your ordinary dog, since an ordinary dog wouldn't be writing this book, would he?)

To become a WRITER I had to learn to INTERRUPT, to speak up, to speak a little louder, and then LOUDER, and then to just speak in my own voice which is NOT LOUD AT ALL.

It's hard to write and be open and let things in when life is tough, but to keep everything out means there's nothing to work with.

I had energy because I had no choice but to have energy. I had to write to support my children and I had to do all the heavy lifting. Freedom is never free. Anyone who has struggled to be free knows how much it costs.

To unfold any number of ideas through all the dimensions of time is the great adventure of the writing life. But I had nowhere to write.

The truth was her husband had the final word because he wrote words and then he put full stops at the end of them. She knew this, but what did his wife know?

A female writer cannot afford to feel her life too clearly. If she does, she will write in a rage when she should write calmly.

I knew I wanted to be a writer more than anything else in the world, but I was overwhelmed by everything and didn't know where to start.

To unfold any number of ideas through all the dimensions of time is the great adventure of the writing life.

The writing life is mostly about stamina. To get to the finishing line requires the writing to become more interesting than everyday life...

The strength of your book is your conflict. For many writers that sentence should read, "The strength of your book is your villain." How

Writers write. Period. No matter how hard it is. One word after another. Sometimes the sentences spill quickly from our fingertips, and other times we bang our heads against the wall wondering why we do this to ourselves.

In my experience, I've noticed that waiting on tables is one of two things that almost everyone thinks they can do. The other is writing. Perhaps it's no accident that there is only one letter of difference between waiter and writer.

A man [Joyce] whose earliest stories appeared next to the manure prices in the Irish Homestead knew that columns of prose, like columns of shit, could both recultivate the earth.

The greatest writers have no purpose but to incite in the minds of each reader the highest and best thought of which they are capable.

To cut and tighten sentences is the secret of mastery.

Richard still calls me "darling" in a heart-melting way. He tells me I'm brave to fall in love again and urges me on in my writing as he always does.

Our job as writers, as we begin that journey, is to figure out what we can do. Only do what you can do. It's a rule I live by. Among other things, it means I can have novels heavier with dialogue than description. But more important, if you only do what you can do, you never have to worry that someone else is doing it. It keeps you from competing. It keeps you looking inside for what's true rather than outside for what's popular. Ideally. Your writing is your fingerprint.

All my life I have written letters - to our mother, our relatives, a wide circle of friends and acquaintance, to my husband, to you. Correspondence has always been as necessary to my happiness as a well-cooked dinner, and I've found it more sustaining for its generosity: an act of charity that returned to me a hundredfold...

There is a film called 'A Separation.' If you see it playing, go see it. It's beautiful. It's so well written and the acting is amazing. It's one of those films that you would love to be a part of.

I love Mikhail Bulgakov. He is very original and takes the story to unexpected places. I didn't realise political writing could be so funny.

I always wanted to work at 'Take A Break' magazine, you know, just to inject a little bit of politics into their stories. I applied for a job there after I'd done my law degree and didn't even get an interview. I only wrote 'Garnethill' because I didn't get that job!

I'm just some fingers resting lightly on a cursor as it slides magically around a kind of Ouija board.

if I had known to what use they [Southerners] were going to put my song, I will be damned if I'd have written it.