Quotes About Writing

When it finds you (whatever we call "it"—the Muse, inspiration, Story), writing moves past the careful construction of a plot line and the adding-in of needed characters. Story overflows outline and cuts its own passage through the valley of fiction. For the writer, it's an immersion.

Why, I wonder, does he write and then burn? Does he seek to banish his memories? Does he fear that writing it down makes it important? Some day, I hope to sit next to him and demand that he tell to me everything he can remember of his life. And I will write it down and never let the flames steal it.

Robin Hobb is the author of the Farseer Trilogy, the Liveship Traders Trilogy, the Tawny Man Trilogy, the Soldier Son Trilogy, the Rain Wilds Chronicles, and the Fitz and the Fool Trilogy. She has also written as Megan Lindholm.

Keep trying, especially at first. It can be very discouraging if your submissions keep being rejected by a publisher, but if your work is what people want to read, you should get there eventually!

If you find a way to write with open heart to Diary, a friend with Truth, no detail spared, your tome like Petrarch's works will contain the scattered fragments of your soul.

The story is always better than your ability to write it.

My books happen. They tend to blast in from nowhere, seize me by the throat, and howl 'Write me! Write me now!' But they rarely stand still long enough for me to see what and who they are, before they hurtle away again. And so I spend a lot of time running after them, like a thrown rider after an escaped horse, saying 'Wait for me! Wait for me!' and waving my notebook in the air.

If your life is worth thinking about,it is worth writing about.

A leaf, bathed in light with stomates wide open to the breath of the air, is not unlike the writer musing in the dark and mind wide open to wisps of thought as amorphous as the atmosphere. We both are sifting and winnowing from the unending flow of materials so ubiquitous as to be invisible, those particular molecules from which life can be built.

Writing is a lot like making soup. My subconscious cooks the idea, but I have to sit down at the computer to pour it out.

They weren't bad books," Phin countered patiently. "They were books that you didn't enjoy. It's not the same thing at all. The only bad books are books that are so badly written that no one will publish them. Any book that has been published is going to be a 'good book' for someone.

Writing had always helped her, before. It always clarified her feelings and her thoughts, and she never felt like she could understand something fully until the very minute that she'd written about it, as if each story was one she told herself and her readers, at the same time.

The greatest calling of all is to have a literary life.

maybe writing doesn't require sacrifice. Maybe it's a gift to experience emotions through our brushes, ink, and paper. I wrote out sorrow, fear, and hate. You wrote desire, joy, and love. We paid a heavy price for speaking our minds, for revealing our hearts, for trying to create, but it was worth it, wasn't it, daughter?

Mille anni addietro il poeta Han Yun scrisse: «Tutto ciò che non ha pace griderà forte». Paragonò il bisogno umano di esprimere i sentimenti con la scrittura alla forza naturale che spinge le piante a stormire nel vento, o il metallo a risuonare quando viene percosso. Formulata quella considerazione, seppi cosa fare. Ci lavoravo da anni. Privata del mondo esterno, avevo passato la vita a guardarmi dentro e le mie emozioni erano finemente accordate.

With her bold act, I realized the true purpose of our secret writing. It was not to compose girlish notes to each other or even to introduce us to the women in our husbands' families. It was to give us a voice.

You are very smart. You must be very well educated. You are very pretty. You must be very rich because you're a writer.

Character gives us qualities, but it is in actions—what we do—that we are happy or the reverse…. All human happiness and misery take the form of action. —ARISTOTLE Writing

The rich and vivid imagining that served her so well on the page was torture in her real life sometimes, if she let her thoughts sweep her away.

You can critique her writing, but not her lifestyle.

I decided that adventure was the best way to learn about writing.

Writing for children can be completely honest in non-cynical ways. In adult books you're required to be cynical. It embarrasses us to say positive things. You can have affection and hope in children's books, but that is out of fashion in adult fiction.

Writing is a job. Some days you don't feel like doing your job. But there is no teacher's block or dentist's block. I can't figure out why we have created this mysterious phrase .. only for writers .. which only means I don't feel like doing this right now.

Head in the direction you wish to arrive. Don't divert or divide yourself for a degree in English (unless you want to be a teacher) or articles in the local paper (unless you want to be a journalist). You become a fiction writer by writing fiction.