Quotes About Writing

Great books are weighted and measured by their style and matter, and not the trimmings and shadings of their grammar.

When all else fails, write what your heart tells you. You can't depend on your eyes, when your imagination are out of focus.

T[he rules of writing] require that the personages in a tale shall be alive, except in the case of corpses, and that always the reader shall be able to tell the corpses from the others.

Schreiben ist leicht, man muss nur die falschen Worte weglassen.

The difference between the almost right word & the right word is really a large matter--it's the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.- Mark Twain (Letter to George Bainton, 10/15/1888)

Between 1870 and 1905 Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens) tried repeatedly, and at long intervals, to write (or dictate) his autobiography, always shelving the manuscript before he had made much progress. By

Write what you know

PREFACE Book

The reader must not imagine that he is to find in it wisdom, brilliancy, fertility of invention, ingenuity of construction, excellence of form, purity of style, perfection of imagery, truth to nature, clearness of statement, humanly possible situations, humanly possible people, fluent narrative, connected sequence of events

Poco a poco comenzaron a aburrirse y vagaron silenciosos y melancólicos por la isla. Tom se sorprendió a sí mismo escribiendo Becky en la arena; borró el nombre con rabia, pero su mano volvió a escribirlo, se sonrojó y se fue con los otros para ponerse a salvo de la tentación de escribirlo de nuevo.

Es ist idiotisch, sieben oder acht Monate an einem Roman zu schreiben, wenn man in jedem Buchladen für zwei Dollar einen kaufen kann.

Le romancier qui écrit une histoire d'adulte sait exactement où et comment s'arrêter, c'est le plus souvent par un mariage. Quand il s'agit d'un enfant, il s'arrête où il peut.

Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer swears they will keep mum about this and they wish they may Drop down dead in their tracks if they ever tell and Rot.' Huckleberry was filled with admiration of Tom's facility in writing, and the sublimity of his language.

The writing begins when you've finished. Only then do you know what you're trying to say.

Without writers fooling themselves about what their books might accomplish there would be no books at all.

Make no mistake, those who write long books have nothing to say. Of course those who write short books have even less to say.

So often I wonder whether it is my right to capitalize, as I feel, so often, on the grief of others. But then I justify, in my own particular thoughts, by feeling that I can contribute a little to the understanding of what others are going through; then there is reason for doing it.

You're writing like a freshman.' And he replied- I remember this very distinctly: 'We always look for doctors but sometimes we're lucky to find a frosh.

If one invests some interest in, for example, a tree and begins to form some thoughts about this tree then writes these thoughts down, further examining the meanings that surface, allowing for unconscious associations to take place, writing all this down as well, until the subject of the tree branches off into the subject of the shelf, that person will enjoy immense psychological benefits.

But here it is. All that's left. Incoherent scrap. Too bad so much of his life had to slip between the lines of even his own words.

I like that every page in every book can have a gem on it. It's probably what I love most about writing—that words can be used in a way that's like a child playing in a sandpit, rearranging things, swapping them around. They're the best moments in a day of writing—when an image appears that you didn't know would be there when you started work in the morning.

there would be punishment and pain, and there would be happiness, too. That was writing.

Don't punish yourself,' she heard her say again, but there would be punishment and pain, and there would be happiness, too. That was writing.

Just be patient, she told herself, and with the mounting pages, the strength of her writing fist grew.