Quotes About Writing

Sometimes I think every man wants to be a writer. They want to invent a world with the perfect imaginary woman, someone they can boss around and undress at will. They can work out their own aggression with a few fictional rape scenes. Then they can send their fictional surrogate in to save her, a white knight—or a fireman! Someone with all the power and all the agency. Real women, on the other hand, have all these tiresome interests of their own, and won't follow an outline.

Though I could agree with him that Miss Gamache had a good heart, I couldn't read her book without wanting to plunge an ice pick into it while screaming, 'That's for chapter four!

There's a word for a writer who never gives up: published.

In the beginning, we had a great deal of freedom, and Jerry wrote completely out of his imagination - very, very freely. We even had no editorial supervision to speak of, because they were in such a rush to get the thing in before deadline. But later on we were restricted.

When you've got a thing to say, Say it! Don't take half a day. When your tale's got little in it Crowd the whole thing in a minute! Life is short--a fleeting vapor-- Don't you fill the whole blamed paper With a tale which, at a pinch, Could be cornered in an inch! Boil her down until she simmers, Polish her until she glimmers.

The Nagid expressed the idea in verse: Man's wisdom is in what he writes, good sense at the end of his pen; and using his pen he can climb to the height of the scepter in the hand of his king.14

At one time, the first step in courtship was asking permission to write to the person who interested your affections,

To fill in all the gaps in my knowledge beforehand was out of the question for me. I had to write now, or not at all. And I wanted to write.

I had to write now, or not at all. And I wanted to write.

Whoever writes in a foreign language must like a lover accommodate his mode of thinking to it. -- Whoever writes in his native language has the authority of a husband in his own house, if he is in command of it.

I feel instinctively like I've done a good hard day of work when I have been sitting at my laptop, spotlight-focused on tapping out words—at the end of it, I feel a little Puritan rush of pride at my productivity.

If any man wish to write in a clear style, let him be first clear in his thoughts; and if any would write in a noble style, let him first possess a noble soul.

If any man wish to write in a clear style, let him be first clear in his thoughts.

Reading ought to mean understanding; writing ought to mean knowing something; believing ought to mean comprehending; when you desire a thing, you will have to take it; when you demand it, you will not get it; and when you are experienced, you ought to be useful to others.

Our life is a book that writes itself and whose principal themes sometimes escape us. We are like characters in a novel who do not always understand what the author wants of them.

To be of mixed blood is a great gift for a writer. I have one foot on tribal lands and one foot in middle-class life.

The difficulty of writing a good theatre play set in new reality was even greater given that the level of similitude to life that is allowed in a film would not work on the stage.

I tend to be a subscriber to the idea that you have everything you need by the time you're 12 years old to do interesting writing for most of the rest of your life - certainly by the time you're 18.

You'd only write what you know and what you know is what you do and the people you know. So you'd write about them or the people you have met casually. It's part of your life.

Well, I have to write. A lot of people forget that. They think I'm sort of crazy baffoon who can't make up his mind what to do in life

The first few months of my life of every year are in total retreat. I don't see anybody except my husband and my dog, I don't talk to anybody, and I just write.

What a long way it is from one life to another: yet why write if not for that distance; if things can be let go, every before replaced by an after.

Writing fiction is an endless and always defeated effort to capture some quality of life without killing it.

Family is the most important thing in my life, so I guess it's not surprise that I like to write about it.