Quotes About Writing

ABSINTHE – Extra-violent poison: one glass and you are dead. Journalists drink it while writing their articles. Has killed more soldiers than the Bedouins.

It is a delicious thing to write, to be no longer yourself, but to move in an entire universe of your own creation.

Writing is a dog's life, but the only life worth living.

J'ai regardé à ma montre, et j'ai calculé combien de temps il me restait à vivre ; j'ai vu que j'avais encore une heure à peine. Il me reste assez de papier sur ma table pour retracer à la hête tous les souvenirs de ma vie et toutes les circonstances qui ont influé sur cet enchaînement stupide et logique de jours et de nuits , de larmes et de rires, qu'on a coutume d'appeler l'existence d'un homme.

It is a delicious thing to write, to be no longer yourself but to move in an entire universe of your own creating. Today, for instance, as man and woman, both lover and mistress, I rode in a forest on an autumn afternoon under the yellow leaves, and I was also the horse, the leaves, the wind, the words my people uttered, even the red sun that made them almost close their love-drowned eyes.

Avec ma main brûlée j'ai le droit maintenant d'écrire des phrases sur la nature du feu.

Gustave Flaubert

Gustave Flaubert

La parole éblouit et trompe, parce qu'elle est mimée par le visage, parce qu'on la voit sortir des lèvres, et que les lèvres plaisent et que les yeux séduisent. mais les mots noirs sur le papier blanc, c'est l'âme toute nue.

Les vraies femmes de lettres sont des phénomènes. Leur rareté fait leur prix.

I have written less than most writers. But I have drunk far more than most drinkers.

Writing is the starting point from which all goodness (and crappiness) flows.

Starting your book is only the first five miles of a twenty-six-mile marathon that's one-third of a triathlon (authoring, publishing, and entrepreneuring).

I have a hardcore attitude: a "self-published, ghost-written book" is wrong because the concept behind self publishing is that you have knowledge or emotions that you want to express. When people read a book—particularly a self-published one—they have the right to expect that it's the person's writing, not cleaned-up dictation or slapping a name on a book that someone else wrote.

The best way to become acquainted with a subject is to write a book about it. Benjamin Disraeli

Smart writers understand that writing is also a business. Really smart writers see themselves also as entrepreneurs. Barry Eisler

A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom will make it clearer? 4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? GEORGE ORWELL, "POLITICS AND THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man. FRANCIS BACON, "OF STUDIES

Writing is often a lonely and difficult process, so take a moment to reflect on the good reasons and bad reasons to write a book. We still encourage you to do it, because it is one of the most rewarding experiences in life, but few things worth doing are easy.

Sportswriter Red Smith described writing by saying, "You simply sit down at the typewriter, open your veins, and bleed.

I used to come home at night full of inspiration, and sit up with a bottle of Scotch. As I wrote, the words seemed wonderful, just too wonderful to be coming from me. Next morning I always found they were terrible and I could never use anything I wrote.

The only book that is worth writing is the one we don't have the courage or strength to write. The book that hurts us (we who are writing), that makes us tremble, redden, bleed

By writing her self, woman will return to the body which has been more than confiscated from her, which has been turned into the uncanny stranger on display - the ailing or dead figure, which so often turns out to be the nasty companion, the cause and location of inhibitions. Censor the body and you censor breath and speech at the same time. Write your self. Your body must be heard. Only then will the immense resources of the unconscious spring forth.

And I was afraid. She frightens me because she can knock me down with a word. Because she does not know that writing is walking on a dizzying silence setting one word after the other on emptiness. Writing is miraculous and terrifying like the flight of a bird who has no wings but flings itself out and only gets wings by flying.