Quotes About Writing

Clutter is the disease of American writing. We are a society strangling in unnecessary words, circular constructions, pompous frills, and meaningless jargon.

Mark my words, when a society has to resort to the lavatory for its humour, the writing is on the wall.

Du kannst dir nicht vorstellen, wie sehr ich ringe um ein Quäntchen Schreiben, um einen Hauch Ich, nein, kannst Du nicht, auch wenn Du vieles kannst, das wird Dir nicht gelingen- doch nachts die Nase an mein duftendes, winziges neues Söhnchen zu halten und so einzuschlafen, wer will das ersetzen?

I find writing extremely difficult. I usually have to drag myself to my desk, mainly because I doubt myself. And it's getting harder because I want to improve with every book. Sometimes I guess it's best just to forget there's an audience and just write like no one will ever read it at all.

Failure has been my best friend as a writer. It tests you, to see if you have what it takes to see it through.

I guess I'm what you call a slush-piler. I just sent my manuscripts to the slush pile of publishers and hoped for the best. Over seven years, I was rejected seven times on three different books. The fourth attempt was picked up by a small publisher, and I still have great memories of staying up all night, talking to my brother and sisters (my dad called me at 2:30 in the morning because I was overseas).

To me the question is always this: if a ray of light came out of the sky and said, "Your next book will never be published -- would you still write it?" If the answer is yes, the book is worth writing.

For a moment, I debated whether I should tell someone about the words I'd started writing down, but I couldn't. In a way, I felt ashamed, even though my writing was the one thing that whispered okayness in my ear. I didn't speak it, to anyone.

I don't write poetry or short stories. I don't like to write articles usually. I tend to really only want to be focused on writing novels. It's one of the real advantages I've had over the years. I've only been good at one thing. It helps to be limited.

I like that every page in every book can have a gem on it. It's probably what I love most about writing--that words can be used in a way that's like a child playing in a sandpit, rearranging things, swapping them around. They're the best moments in a day of writing -- when an image appears that you didn't know would be there when you started work in the morning.

I see how complicated it is to make a film and how many people are involved and I love the fact that I get to sit in a room on my own and the set costs nothing and the actors cost nothing and I'm the director and it's so simple. You just need a pen and paper to make a book. You don't need a huge budget or a gaffer or a best boy.

I look at my first books and am glad they weren't published.... You start writing by imitating your heroes, then you keep the heart of that worship in your work. As time goes by, you get other influences and find your own voice.

Al parecer, soy incapaz de pensar sin escribir.

Those who write are writers. Those who wait are waiters.

The process is a lot like writing. You start with a wisp of memory, or some detail that won't let you be. You write, you cross out. You write again, revise, feel like giving up. What pulls you through? Curiosity.

There are three things that make me want to drink: difficult times, when I want alcohol to either alleviate the pain or allow me to feel it; clear days that make me want to scribble all over the irritating blue sky; and well, waking up in the morning.

Nothing is wasted when you are a writer. The stuff that doesn't work has to be written to make way for the stuff that might; often you need to take the long way around. And if you're writing memoir you're bound to discover things about yourself you didn't realize before, may indeed prefer never to have know, but there you are: progress of some sort.

Those who write clearly have readers, those who write obscurely have commentators.

Writing, the art of communicating thoughts to the mind through the eye, is the great invention of the world...enabling us to converse with the dead, the absent, and the unborn, at all distances of time and space.

The written word may be man's greatest invention. It allows us to converse with the dead, the absent, and the unborn.

Writing is the great invention of the world.

if you want your name to be remembered after your death either do something worth writing or write some thing worth reading

Soccer writers seemed as starved for entertainment as art critics, anything vaguely enjoyable gets promoted to the level of genius.

Winter is the white page on which we write our hearts.