Quotes About Writing

A letter makes ordinary things seem important.

I think that to be a good writer, you have to put yourself on the line, you have to think deeply about what is meaningful to you and you have to make a good-faith effort to speak from the integrity of your own deep experience.... People don't think about assessing what is the deepest narrative for them. I think that that's about 99 percent of the subject of literature.... Write from it.

For me writing has always felt like praying, even when I wasn't writing prayers, as I was often enough. You feel that you are with someone. I feel I am with you now, whatever that can mean, considering that you're only a little fellow now and when you're a man you might find these letters of no interest.

For me writing has always felt like praying, even when I wasn't writing prayers as I was often enough. You feel that you are with someone.

I write a book because there is a voice in my mind, a burden of narrative. Of course I am pleased that these voices interest other people, too. When I write I am always aware that perception is beautiful, and that to be human is a very high and very complicated privilege. I want my fiction to be true, and to me these are very essential truths.

For me writing has always felt like praying even when I wasn't writing prayers, as I was often enough. You felt that you are with someone

I don't write the way I speak. I'm afraid you would think I didn't know any better. I don't write the way I do for the pulpit, either, insofar as I can help it. That would be ridiculous, in the circumstances. I do try to write the way I think. But of course that all changes as soon as I put it into words. And the more it does seem to be my thinking, the more pulpitish it sounds, which I guess is inevitable. I will resist that inflection, nevertheless.

what is written on paper affects history. But not life. Life is a different history.

Writing, like gambling, was always a big part of my life," he used to say. "Both gave me sanctuary from the world. And you never really had to kill someone to get what you wanted. You just had to beat fate.

Bija prieks atkal piev?rsties rakst?šanai ar galvu, kas skaidra no koka?na un patiesas m?lest?bas.

writing fiction is the best thing there is because absolutely everything is possible!

escribir lo que no se había vivido, lo que sólo se había querido vivir, era también una manera —cobarde y tímida— de vivirlo...

Scrivere un romanzo è una cerimonia che somiglia allo streap-tease. Come la ragazza che, sotto impudichi riflettori, si libera dei propri indumenti e mostra, a uno a uno, i suoi incanti segreti, così anche il romanziere mette a nudo la propria intimità in pubblico attraverso i suoi romanzi.

A writer is not always conscious of the influences he has received.

Writing is a compensatory activity, and literature abounds in cases like his. Borges's pages teem with knives, crimes, and scenes of torture, but the cruelty is kept at a distance by his fine sense of irony and by the cool rationalism of his prose, which never falls into sensationalism or the purely emotional. This lends a statuesque quality to the physical horror, giving it the nature of a work of art set in an unreal world.

De fiecare data, imi aparea tot mai clar ca unicul lucru pe care doream sa-l fac in viata era sa devin scriitor si astfel mi se intarea convingerea ca singura cale pentru a reusi este aceea de a te darui, trup si suflet, numai literaturii.

Por lo menos, confiesa que te he dado tema para una novela. ¿No, niño bueno?

Ninguna otra novela me ha dado tanto trabajo; por eso, si tuviera que salvar del fuego una sola de las que he escrito, salvaría ésta.

Desvarío empobrecedor el de querer escribir novelas, el de querer explayar en quinientas páginas algo que se puede formular en una sola frase».

La vocación literaria no es un pasatiempo, un deporte, un juego refinado que se practica en los ratos de ocio. Es una dedicación exclusiva y excluyente, una prioridad a la que nada puede anteponerse, una servidumbre libremente elegida que hace de sus víctimas (de sus dichosas victimas) unos esclavos.

Nessa altura comecei a descobrir a incómoda verdade: a matéria-prima da literatura não é a felicidade mas a infelicidade humana, e os escritores, tal como os abutres, preferem alimentar-se de carne putrefacta.

Descobri nessa altura que os romances se escreviam principalmente com obsessões e não com convicções, que o contributo do irracional era, pelo menos, tão importante como o racional na feitura duma ficção.

Querido amigo: estoy tratando de decirle que se olvide de todo lo que ha leído en mis cartas sobre la forma novelesca y de que se ponga a escribir novelas de una vez. Mucha suerte.

De todos modos, escribir lo que no se vivía para hacerse la idea de vivirlo, llevaba ya implícito un castigo: la sensación de fracaso y frustración con que terminaban siempre los juegos mentirosos de sus diarios. (y también los hechos vividos, por lo demás) Pero, ahora, esos juegos irresponsables habían puesto en manos del enemigo un arma formidable para envilecer su nombre y su memoria