Quotes About Writing

The writer is the prey of an inner god who speaks at all times, without bothering, tyrant that he is, with the holidays of his medium. Writers are on holiday, but their Muse is awake, and gives birth non-stop.

And yet, nothing can escape being put into question by History; not even good writing.

Literature is like phosphorus: it shines with its maximum brilliance at the moment when it attempts to die. — Roland Barthes, Writing Degree Zero . (Hill and Wang; Reissue edition April 1, 1977) Originally published 1953

Po mome ukusu, ništa nije indiskretnije od posmatranja nekog dok piše: još je indiskretnije videti nekog da ?ita jedva primetno mi?u?i usnama. Markizu de Sadu je nedostajao taj prizor (za njega isuviše blag): uhvatiti eksplozije na usnama onog koji poluglasno ?ita neki tekst u procesu artikulisanja. Ništa od te minule erotike više nije mogu?e: danas su pisanje i ?itanje skrovite prakse.

I always write from my own experiences, whether I've had them or not.

I'm not trying as a writer to be smart or to understand the inner workings of my narrator, I'm trying to survive the typing of this story.

The world is glutted with magnificent three-page starts, and the road to hell is paved with unfinished manuscripts.

All of the valuable writing I have done in the last ten years has been done in the first twenty minutes after the first time I wanted to leave the room.

The prolific Hamilton was now writing pseudonymous commentaries on his own pseudonymous essays.

Since Hamilton's abiding literary sin was prolixity, the time and length constraints imposed by The Federalist may have given a salutary concision to his writing.

At times Jacky wrote about King's College as if it were a swank resort staffed with servile employees hired to wait upon him, assuring his mother that "there has nothing been omitted by my good friend Doctor Cooper which was necessary to my contentment in this place.

Hamilton did not know it, but he just wrote himself out of poverty.

By spotlighting the issue of intent, Hamilton identified the criteria for libel that still hold sway in America today: that the writing in question must be false, defamatory, and malicious.

History cannot be unwritten or written in the subjunctive, and the wholesale application of late twentieth-century values distorts the past and makes it less comprehensible.

thousand words of fiction a month. He was writing

10. "I always wanted to be in the world of entertainment. I just love the idea of an audience being happy with what I am doing. Writing is showbusiness for shy people. That's how I see it.

I always wanted to be in the world of entertainment. I just love the idea of an audience being happy with what I am doing. Writing is showbusiness for shy people. That's how I see it." —Lee Child

I always wanted to be in the world of entertainment. I just love the idea of an audience being happy with what I am doing. Writing is showbusiness for shy people. That's how I see it.

Books by Lee Child Title Page Copyright Dedication Introduction

I have spent my entire career trying to please the reader; I'm not a master, I'm the servant.

His signature was big and awkward. He was Bulgarian. I guessed he had grown up with the Cyrillic alphabet and was new to writing with Roman letters.

Life as a writer was not what I expected. I knew no other writers. I knew no writing teachers or editors. I had to draw every last bit of strength from the exalted notions I nursed about myself.

Simply to line up words one after another upon a page is to create some order where it did not exist, to give a recognizable shape to the chaos of our lives. Writing cannot bring our loved ones back, but it can sometimes fix them in our fleeting memories as they were in life, and it can always help us make it through the night.

Whenever I didn't know what to write next, I put a swift river in front of his horse and sent the two of them across!