Quotes About Writing

If you do improvising, it can sometimes end up being a waste of time. And if you do that, it's more or less based on a writing process.

I had to wait for a long time before I could support myself with writing. However, being a writer is what I have most wanted to be, from the time I was a child.

Whether you're an unpublished novelist or a sixteen-time New York Times bestselling author, you can always improve your craft. You can always become a better writer.

When you have an idea for a story, you want those characters to reach as many people as you can. I think you normally think of prose as a way of doing that. It fits our time, the culture.

There's something about each of my books that I'm really proud of, and there's something about each of my books that I cringe over.

I like playing around with the words; I love it when I feel like I've picked the exact right word to describe whatever it is I'm trying to describe.

Men like women who write, even though they don't say so. A writer is a foreign country.

Je n'ai jamais écrit, croyant le faire, je n'ai jamais aimé, croyant aimer, je n'ai jamais rien fait qu'attendre devant la porte fermée.

La escritura: la escritura llega como el viento, está desnuda, es la tinta, es lo escrito, y pasa como nada pasa en la vida, nada, excepto eso, la vida.

I want to write. I've already told my mother: That's what I want to do-write. No answer the first time. Then she asks, Write what? I say, Books, novels. [...] She's against it, it's not worthy, it's not real work, it's nonsense. Later she said, A childish idea.

Writing was the only thing that populated my life and made it magic.

L'écrit ça arrive comme le vent, c'est nu, c'est de l'encre, c'est l'écrit, et ça passe comme rien d'autre ne passe dans la vie, rien de plus, sauf elle, la vie. »

Women should not let lovers read the books they write.

Écrire toute sa vie, ça apprend à écrire. Ça ne sauve de rien.

I answered that what I wanted more than anything else in the world was to write, nothing else but that, nothing. Jealous. She's jealous. No answer, just a quick glance immediately averted, a slight shrug, unforgettable. I'll be the first to leave. There are still a few years to wait before she loses me, loses this one of her children. For the sons there's nothing to fear. But this one, she knows, one day she'll go, she'll manage to escape.

Sometimes I realize that if writing isn't, all things, all contraries confounded, a quest for vanity and void, it's nothing. That if it's not, each time, all things confounded into one through some inexpressible essence, then writing is nothing but advertisement.

Écrire, c'est aussi ne pas parler. C'est se taire. C'est parler sans bruit.

Ecrire ce n'est pas raconter des histoires. C'est le contraire de raconter des histoires. C'est raconter tout à la fois. C'est raconter une histoire et l'absence de cette histoire. C'est raconter une histoire qui en passe par son absence. Lol V. Stein est détruite par le bal de S. Thala. Lol V. Stein est bâtie par le bal de S. Thala.

Nunca escrevi julgando fazê-lo nunca amei julgando amar nunca fiz nada senão esperar diante da porta fechada.

The person who writes books must always be enveloped by a separation from others.

Through you I go back to the origin of the sign, to the free writing sketched by wind on the sea and the sand, to the wild writing of the birds. — Marguerite Duras, C'est Tout / No More , transl. Richard Howard (Seven Stories Press, 1998) (via mothwood)

I think that if I had played piano professionally, I would never have written books.

One of the pleasures of loving the Chinese man is to write him down. She may be loving him to have something to write. She has a story to tell because of having loved him. I listen to war veterans say that when they were dumb kids, they went to the Vietnam War (which the Vietnamese call the American War) to find something to write about.

Y.A.: Ça sert à quoi, écrire? M.D.: C'est à la fois se taire et parler. écrire. Ça veut dore aussi chanter quelquefois. Y.A.: Danser? M.D.: Ça compte aussi. C'est un état de l'individu, danser. J'ai beaucoup aimé danser. Y.A.: Pourquoi? M.D.: Je ne sais pas encore.