Quotes About Writing

the page. It was an ecstasy to write without hesitation, to write everything hidden inside of me, to write with the sort of audacity I wouldn't have found in person.

Taking the bowl in his hands, he turned it as he read aloud, "Lord our God, hear my prayer, the prayer of my heart." Looking up, he held my gaze a moment before continuing. "Bless the largeness inside me, no matter how I fear it. Bless my reed pens and my inks. Bless the words I write. May they be beautiful in your sight. May they be visible to eyes not yet born. When I am dust, sing these words over my bones: she was a voice.

The words opened a raw, furious place in me. She wanted me to write? My daughter was dead. My writing was dead, too. One day had never come. I was the shattered pieces on the floor. Life had taken a mallet to me.

I tell you, there are times when words are so glad to be set free they laugh out loud and prance across their tablets and inside their scrolls. So it was with the words I wrote. They reveled till dawn.

And it was, but I could feel the tiny lump of anger tucked beneath my awe. A half million scrolls and codices were within these walls, and all but a handful were by men. They had written the known world.

I emphasized the importance of essays since, as scientists, they would one day have to write papers to prove their theories. But in reality, nothing was ever proven in their world, since everything was at the whim of the Great Leader. Their writing skills were as stunted as their research skills. Writing inevitably consisted of an endless repetition of his achievements, none of which was ever verified, since they lacked the concept of backing up a claim with evidence.

A common mistake is to consider planning as only a mental process, an idea in our head that simply looks at the past and adjusts for the future. If your plan is not in writing, you do not have a plan at all. Instead, you have only a dream, a vision, or perhaps even a nightmare.

The child I was is the only child I really know.' That's it. I can still feel what it was like to be that child of the 1940s from inside; I am still the same mixture of insecurity and determination, shyness and arrogance, curiosity and fear. I have the same talent she had; the same imagination. I write for her, for that child, and so it is true when I say I write for myself.

Writing is one of the loneliest professions in the world because it has to be practiced in this very separate private world, in _here_. Not in the mind; in the imagination. And I think it is possible that the writing of fantasy is the loneliest job of the lot, since you have to go further inside. You have to make so close a connection with the unconscious that the unbiddable door will open and the images fly out, like birds.

And then, standing among the trunks of the fruit trees, silver-grey in the moonlight, I recalled that the way to banish an old ghost that continues its hauntings is to exorcise it. Well then, mine should be exorcised. I should tell my tale, not aloud, by the fireside, not as a diversion for idle listeners – it was too solemn, and too real, for that. But I should set it down on paper, with every care and in every detail. I would write my own ghost story.

REMEMBER When writing up your mental status exam, whenever possible, document your observations with the client's own words.

She decided she would find out all she could about Bettina then kill off a character just like her in her next book. The death would be grisly, she promised herself. Slow and painful.

laid out the quill, ink, sand, and paper.

Reading usually precedes writing. And the impulse to write is almost always fired by reading. Reading, the love of reading, is what makes you dream of becoming a writer.

Love words, agonize over sentences. And pay attention to the world.

If I thought that what I'm doing when I write is expressing myself, I'd junk the typewriter. Writing is a much more complicated activity that that.

My urge to write is an urge not to self-expressionism but to self-transcendence. My work is both bigger and smaller than I am.

My desire to write is connected with my homosexuality. I need the identity as a weapon, to match the weapon that society has against me. It doesn't justify my homosexuality. But it would give me — I feel — a license.

Creo que lo más importante a la hora de escribir es pensar que algún lector necesitado espera con ansias ese texto. Comencé a escribir pensando en lo que quería leer. Si mantienes esa premisa, quieras o no, serás honesto.

I don't write because there's an audience. I write because there is literature.

Love words, agonize over sentences. And pay

What is the secret of suddenly beginning to write, finding a voice? Try whiskey. Also being warm.

Acho que não estou pronta para aprender como se escreve. Pensar com palavras, não com ideias.

I'm often asked if there is something I think writers ought to do, and recently in an interview I heard myself say: "Several things. Love words, agonize over sentences. And pay attention to the world." Needless to say, no sooner had these perky phrases fallen out of my mouth than I thought of some more recipes for writer's virtue. For instance: "Be serious." By which I meant: Never be cynical. And which doesn't preclude being funny.