Quotes About Writing

The key to writing is something to be stolen. How else does one open the door to a house of thieves?

Writers are compulsive liars desperately trying to tell themselves the truth.

She imagined Ripley sitting at the typewriter with her as she wrote her novel. I imagined her sitting with me as I wrote my screenplay.

Writing is a combination of intangible creative fantasy and appallingly hard work.

Three hours a day will produce as much as a man ought to write.

It had at this time become my custom… to write with my watch before me, and to require from myself 250 words every quarter of an hour. I have found that the 250 words have been forthcoming as regularly as my watch went.

The satirist who writes nothing but satire should write but little -- or it will seem that his satire springs rather from his own caustic nature than from the sins of the world in which he lives.

There is no way of writing well and also of writing easily.

It's hard for me to speak, whether in English or Afrikaans. The reason I write is because I cannot speak. I feel blunt.

D'autre part la langue écrite, la langue littéraire, surchargée, pompeuse, pâteuse, prétentieuse, gorgée de digressions ineptes, absconse, évasive, allusive, ne réussissait qu'à lui transmettre un vilain bruit et de vilaines évidences très mal formulées (Black Village p. 123)

and thanked me for listening to his story. Now it's yours. It's out there. Do with it what you will. There it was. He wanted me to write it. I had no intention of doing so.

I confess I seldom commune with my conscience when I write.

Writers are as jealous as pigeons.

It is a poor thing for the writer to take on that which he doesnt understand.

I try to catch every sentence, every word you and I say, and quickly lock all these sentences and words away in my literary storehouse because they might come in handy.

An artist must pass judgment only on what he understands; his range is limited as that of any other specialist—that's what I keep repeating and insisting upon. Anyone who says that the artist's field is all answers and no questions has never done any writing or had any dealings with imagery. An artist observes, selects, guesses and synthesizes.

All Writing Is Garbage. People who come out of nowhere to try to put into words any part of what goes on in their minds are pigs. The whole literary scene is a pigpen, especially today.

All writing is garbage. People who come out of nowhere to try and put into words any part of what goes on in their minds are pigs.

the serial comma—that is, the comma after the penultimate item in a series and just before the conjunction (a, b, and c). Authorities on English usage overwhelmingly recommend using the serial comma to prevent ambiguities.

asyndeton (absence of conjunction) is normally equivalent to syndeton (use of the conjunction and).

In order to write poetry, you must first invent a poet who will write it.

No escribo porque tenga cosas urgentes que decir. Escribo por el gusto de llenar las páginas en blanco del cuaderno que tengo abierto delante de mí.

words, literature, are not in the consciousness of the person who writes but in his fingers and the paper and the typewriter, just like the statues of Michelangelo were in the block of marble where they were revealed.

Rather than regret for what I have written, I feel regret for what I shall never be able to read.