Quotes About Writing

I had a very dysfunctional family, and a very hard childhood. So I made a world out of words. And it was my salvation.

Words are the coins making up the currency of sentences, and there are always too many small coins.

I really enjoy finding the right word, creating a good, flowing sentence. I enjoy the rhythm of the words.

Eating words has never given me indigestion.

When I sit down with my notebook, when I start scribbling words across the page, I find out what I'm feeling.

Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all.

The material came bubbling up inside like a geyser or an oil gusher. It streamed up of its own accord, down my arm and out of my fountain pen in a torrent of six thousand words a day.

Work less than you think you should. It took me a while to realise there was a point each day when my creativity ran out and I was just producing words - usually lousy ones - for their own sake. And nap: it helps to refresh the brain, at least mine.

Tweeting has taught me the discipline to say more with fewer words.

On the last drafts, I focus on the words themselves, including the rub of vowels and consonants, stressed and unstressed syllables. Yet even at this stage I'm often surprised. A different ending or a new character shows up and I'm back to where I began, letting the story happen, just trying to stay out of the way.

I think to really be literate in nu shu you only need about 600 characters because it is phonetic. So you're able to then create many words out of one character.

I write short, my words tight to the thread of the narrative.

The miracle of turning inklings into thoughts and thoughts into words and words into metal and print and ink never palls for me.

I had never thought of myself as a dramatist, and, for really good technical results, the thought came too late: a man of letters has become too wordy to write economically for the stage.

For a memoir to really succeed, the author has to do such hard work before they come to the page. They have to do a brutal self-examination of everything they believe to be true.

I had, at a point in time, decided not to write on the corporate world. But if people expect me to set stories in a work environment, then why go away from it?

I have a strong work ethic, yet I'm incredibly lazy as well. The problem with being a writer is that everything you do can be called research. Sitting in the pub is research. Reading the newspaper can be research.

Many writers learned their craft and work ethic at a newspaper. I benefited from that.

My experience as a newspaper reporter was invaluable in terms of getting me to the kind of writing I do now. It gave me a work ethic of writing every day and pushing through difficult creative times. I mean, there's no writer's block allowed in a newsroom.

I studied to be a journalist, but I don't think I would have made a very good one. I don't have the work ethic.

You'll work hard to create characters that are compelling and unforgettable. But in the end, it's the story that matters.

I feel I have to work hard to nurture whatever talent I have as an actor. I feel like it's not natural to me. So I don't take it for granted... What I think is my natural ability - which is writing - I think I totally take that for granted.

I know that to write you have to have stories you want to tell. You have to keep your mind alive, and you have to work hard.

As a teacher at Princeton, I'm surrounded by people who work hard so I just make good use of my time. And I don't really think of it as work - writing a novel, in one sense, is a problem-solving exercise.