Quotes About Writing

I write in order to make the little voices in my head go away. Thus far it hasn't worked.

A lot of aspiring writers quote the right people, but they do so like Mary Bennett in Pride and Prejudice. They quote Austen like Mary quoted her eighteenth-century bromides, and were Austen here to see them do it, she'd slap them right into her next book, and it wouldn't be pretty.

In the early days of my career, I always wrote with skeptics in mind, trying to make sure they would approve of my work.

So the writer who breeds more words than he needs, is making a chore for the reader who reads.

It has often been said there's so much to be read, you never can cram all those words in your head. So the writer who breeds more words than he needs is making a chore for the reader who reads. That's why my belief is the briefer the brief is, the greater the sigh of the reader's relief is. And that's why your books have such power and strength. You publish with shorth! (Shorth is better than length.)

Writing simply means no dependent clauses, no dangling things, no flashbacks, and keeping the subject near the predicate. We throw in as many fresh words we can get away with. Simple, short sentences don't always work. You have to do tricks with pacing, alternate long sentences with short, to keep it vital and alive.... Virtually every page is a cliffhanger--you've got to force them to turn it."~

We throw in as many fresh words as we can get away with. Simple, short sentences don't always work. You have to do tricks with pacing, alternate long sentences with short, to keep it alive and vital. Virtually every page is a cliff-hanger—you've got to force them to turn it.

I start drawing, and eventually the characters involve themselves in a situation. Then in the end, I go back and try to cut out most of the preachments.

he took political sketch-writing to a new level, invented sports commentary as we know it, and created the essay-form as practised by Clive James, Gore Vidal, and Michael Foot.

You write because the brain is an endless wilderness whose roughest terrain can only be traveled with a pencil.

I'm conscious of race whenever I'm writing, just as I'm conscious of class, religion, human psychology, politics — everything that makes up the human experience. I don't think I can do a good job if I'm not paying attention to what's meaningful to people, and in American culture, there isn't anything that informs human interaction more than the idea of race.

To be a writer, a creative person, you must retain your ability to react uniquely. Your feelings must remain your own. The day you mute yourself, or moderate yourself, or repress your proneness to get excited or ecstatic or angry or emotionally involved...that day, you die as a writer.

But as Mark Twain once observed, the difference between the right word and the almost right word is as the difference between lightning and the lightning bug. So do strive for that right word!

The preceding chapter tells you how to communicate with your readers. With words. What should you as a fiction writer communicate? Feelings.

How do you master all the varied techniques? By writing stories. Which is to say, by being willing to be wrong. Then, having been wrong, you check back through your stuff for process errors . . . places where you skipped over steps, or went off the path, or started with the road map upside down. Do that enough times, on enough stories, and eventually you'll learn.

In general, the trick is to bring the past forward into the present, so that you describe what happens in past tense instead of past perfect.

The lesson here is, don't try to cram too much into one sentence; and the issue lies less in length than it does in content. Any time you feel the need to explain some aspect of your basic sentence, take pause. Odds are that what's bothering you really calls for an additional sentence or two or three, so that you can keep your developing line of thought straight and clear and simple.

To get maximum effect, put adverbs at the beginning or end of the sentence: "Angrily, he walked away." Or, "He walked away angrily." Though special cases may justify "He walked angrily away," or the like, most often the effect of the modifier upon the reader is lost.

And so it goes with words and language. They're tools. All your writing life, you work with them . . . using them to tie your reader to your story.

Writing is not apart from living. Writing is a kind of double living.

Writing is a solitary occupation.

Whatever part drink may play in the writer's life, it must play none in his or her work.

I'm blessed, because I enjoy every part of my life. I enjoy writing songs. I've been trying to write songs since I was five years old.

I wrote every day between the ages of 12 and 20 when I stopped because I went to Barcelona, where life was too exciting to write.