Quotes About Writing

I have made no attempt at chronology. My writing hasn't changed much over the years. That's because I haven't changed. I am still the impractical dreamer that I was sixty years ago, when I decided that writing would be my vocation and my profession. I do not suffer from writer's block. I have only to sit down at my desk for the words to come tumbling on to my writing pad. And if an ant moves across my desk, I shall record its transit.

When I'm writing there's nobody watching me. Today, it's hard to find a profession where you're not being watched!

Typewriters and computers were not designed with steep mountain slopes in mind. On one occasion last autumn I did carry my typewriter into the garden, and I am still trying to extricate a couple of acorns from under the keys, while the roller seems permanently stained from some fine yellow pollen dust from the deodar trees. But armed with pencils and paper, I can lie on the grass and write for hours. Provided there are a couple of cheese-and-tomato sandwiches within easy reach.

shall have to write some raunchy stuff if I'm going to make much money.

As a boy, reading was my religion. It helped me to discover my soul. Later, writing helped me to record its journey.

People often ask me why my style is so simple. It is, in fact, deceptively simple, for no two sentences are alike. It is clarity that I am striving to attain, not simplicity.

good omelettes are still hard to come by. They shouldn't be made in a hurried or slapdash manner. Some thought has to go into an omelette. And a little love too. It's like writing a book—done much better with some feeling!

People often ask me why my style is so simple. It is, in fact, deceptively simple, for no two sentences are alike. It is clarity that I am striving to attain, not simplicity. Of course, some people want literature to be difficult and there are writers who like to make their readers toil and sweat. They hope to be taken more seriously that way. I have always tried to achieve a prose that is easy and conversational. And those who think this is simple should try it for themselves.

It comes down to this: Ruby is a language for grown-ups; it gives you the tools for writing clear and concise code. It's up to you to use them.

The only thing I was fit for was to be a writer, and this notion rested solely on my suspicion that I would never be fit for real work, and that writing didn't require any.

Rereading A.J. Liebling carries me happily back to an age when all good journalists knew they had plenty to be modest about, and were.

There is a growing literature about the multitude of journalism's problems, but most of it is concerned with the editorial side of the business, possibly because most people competent to write about journalism are not comfortable writing about finance.

If you dedicate your attention to discipline in your life you become smarter while you are writing than while you are hanging out with your pals or in any other line of work.

There's only the writing, which I admit to knowing very little about. But then it's probably best not to know. It allows one to work without expectation. Best to let the poem do the thinking while we concern ourselves with what's called the personal life.

description is deadly to a prose poem.

I never liked the term "experimental writing," but what else is a prose poem? Having written a number of them, I still don't know how they're written.

Every journalist has a novel inside him, which is an excellent place for it.

Maybe that's when bad scripts are written, when you choose the theme first. I consider that I've something to say when I've thought of a person, a moment, a single beat of the heart, that I think is true and interesting, and therefore should be seen.

I was touched by the honesty and courage that I felt it took for you, an academic, to write a book as personal as this one.

That's what it feels like when I write, like I have this beautiful world in my head, but when I try to remember it in order to write it down, I change it, and I can't ever get it back.

It made me sad when I caught myself pretending that everybody out there in cyberspace cared about what I thought, when really nobody gives a shit. And when I multiplied that sad feeling by all the millions of people in their lonely little rooms, furiously writing and posting to their lonely little pages that nobody has time to read because they're all so busy writing and posting, it kind of broke my heart.

An unfinished book. left unattended, turns feral, and she would need all her focus, will and ruthless determination to tame it again.

Have you been writing any personal experience articles lately?" the woman asked the writer. "No," replied the writer. "I've been busy having them.