Quotes About Writing

Application, resignation, and chance had gone into the writing; I saw, however, that Daneri's real work lay not in the poetry but in his invention of reasons why the poetry should be admired. Of course, this second phase of his effort modified the writing in his eyes, though not in the eyes of others.

Yo he escrito también algunos cuentos en los cuales traté ambiciosa e inultimente de ser Kafka

El ejercicio de las letras es misterioso; lo que opinamos es efímero y opto por la tesis platónica de la Musa y no por la de Poe, que razonó, o fingió razonar, que la escritura de un poema es una operación de la inteligencia.

En mi época no había Best-Sellers y no podíamos prostituírnos. No había quien comprara nuestra prostitución.

Methodical writing distracts me from the present condition of men. But the certainty that everything has been already written nullifies or makes phantoms of us all.

Je n'écris pas pour une petite élite dont je n'ai cure, ni pour cette entité platonique adulée qu'on surnomme la Masse. Je ne crois pas à ces deux abstractions, chères au démagogue. J'écris pour moi, pour mes amis et pour adoucir le cours du temps.

In my own case, the process is more or less unvarying. I begin with the glimpse of a form, a kind of remote island, which will eventually be a story or a poem. I see the end and I see the beginning, but not what is in between. That is gradually revealed to me, when the stars or chance are propitious. More than once, I have had to retrace my steps by way of the shadows.

Gradualmente, el enigma concreto que me atareaba me inquietó menos que el enigma genérico de una sentencia escrita por un dios. ¿Qué tipo de sentencia (me pregunté) construirá una mente absoluta? Consideré que aun en los lenguajes humanos no hay proposición que no implique el universo entero…

Un buon lettore è raro quanto un bravo scrittore.

On lit ce qu'on aime, tandis qu'on écrit pas ce qu'on aimerait écrire, mais ce qu'on est capable d'écrire.

Desvario laborioso e empobrecedor é o de compor vastos livros; o de espraiar por quinhentas páginas uma ideia cuja perfeita exposição oral cabe em poucos minutos.

Perhaps in order to write a really great book, you must be rather unaware of the fact. You can slave away at it and change every adjective to some other adjective, but perhaps you can write better if you leave the mistakes.

I think of myself as being essentially a reader. I have ventured into writing, but I think what I have read is far more important than what I have written. For one reads what one likes—yet one writes not what one would like to write but what one is able to write.

17 La vieja mano sigue trazando versos para el olvido

Sentí, en la última página, que mi narración era un símbolo del hombre que yo fui, mientras la escribía y que, para redactar esa narración, yo tuve que ser aquel hombre y que, para ser aquel hombre, yo tuve que redactar esa narración, y así hasta lo infinito.

Before I ever wrote a single line, I knew, in some mysterious and therefore unequivocal way, that I was destined for literature. What I didn't realize at first is that besides being destined to be a reader, I was also destined to be a writer, and I don't think one is less important than the other.

En una ocasión le pregunté a Alfonso Reyes por qué publicamos, y Reyes me contestó: «Publicamos para no tener que pasarnos la vida corrigiendo borradores».

Fuera de algunas amistades y de muchas costumbres, el problemático ejercicio de la literatura constituía su vida; como todo escritor, medía las virtudes de los otros por lo ejecutado por ellos y pedía que los otros lo midieran por lo que vislumbraba o planeaba.

A good sentence in English has a structure that begins with the second most important element, moves to the least important element, and ends with the strongest element. The pattern is 2-3-1.

Leer, por lo pronto, es una actividad posterior a la de escribir: más resignada, más civil, más intelectual

The composition of vast books is a laborious and impoverishing extravagance. To go on for five hundred pages developing an idea whose perfect oral exposition is possible in a few minutes! A better course of procedure is to pretend that these books already exist, and then to offer a resume, a commentary … More reasonable, more inept, more indolent, I have preferred to write notes upon imaginary books. —Prologue to The Garden of Forking Paths, 10 November 1941

Writing is nothing more than a guided dream

in the business of writing what one accumulates is not expertise but uncertainties. Which is but another name for craft.

In the business of writing, what one accumulates is not experience but uncertainties.