Quotes About Writing

The process of writing has something infinite about it. Even though it is interrupted each night, it is one single notation.

Our society is intertwined with the economy that we've built, which is a fantastically complex system. I hope that my writing about it might do some good, but that's not why I do it.

I always wanted to work at 'Take A Break' magazine, you know, just to inject a little bit of politics into their stories. I applied for a job there after I'd done my law degree and didn't even get an interview. I only wrote 'Garnethill' because I didn't get that job!

A job letter, an interview - even a writing sample - have far less to do with intellect and far more to do with aesthetics than you think.

She discovered what most writers insist is true nowadays, which is that they can only write for three hours a day at the most, so what else is there to do but drink?

writers all had drinking problems in the twentieth century, and once she got the $1,080 check, she was obviously a writer and it was obviously the twentieth century, so of course she had a drinking problem.

Robert said, "How can you waste your time on something that won't make money?" "Didn't you used to write plays?" I asked.

And I was in love with his book, which I felt I could have written myself. Which is one of the troubles with writing; people who love your writing already think they're you. They think if they sat down and wrote, it would be your book. Exactly what I thought about Walter.

His true Penelope was Flaubert,He fished by obstinate isles.

Poetry must be as well written as prose.

Good writers are those who keep the language efficient. That is to say, keep it accurate, keep it clear. It doesn't matter whether the good writer wants to be useful, or whether the good writer wants to be harm.

Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree.

Nothing written for pay is worth printing. Only what has been written against the market.

A people that grows accustomed to sloppy writing is a people in process of losing grip on its empire and on itself.

Fundamental accuracy of statement is the ONE sole morality of writing.

Pay no attention to the criticism of men who have never themselves written a notable work. --Ezra Pound

If anybody ever shuts you in Indiana...and you don't at least write some unconstrained something or other, I give up hope for your salvation.

Pay no attention to the criticism of men who have never themselves written a notable work. Consider the discrepancies between the actual writing of the Greek poets and dramatists, and the theories of the Graeco-Roman grammarians, concocted to explain their metres.

There is something so degrading - at least, one would think that there were something so degrading in the practice of writing as a trade - that anyone who has once earned a livelihood, or part of it, obviously and openly, by popular writing, can never be seriously regarded by any great number of people. And then, of course, "he does too much.

Incompetence will show in the use of too many words. The reader's first and simplest test of an author will be to look for words that do not function; that contribute nothing to the meaning OR that distract from the MOST important factor of the meaning to factors of minor importance.

Good writers are those who keep the language efficient. That is to say, keep it accurate, keep it clear. It doesn't matter whether the good writer wants to be useful, or whether the bad writer wants to do harm.

The man of understanding can no more sit quiet and resigned while his country lets its literature decay, and lets good writing meet with contempt, than a good doctor could sit quiet and contented while some ignorant child was infecting itself with tuberculosis under the impression that it was merely eating jam tarts.

It is difficult to write a paradiso when all the superficial indications are that you ought to write an apocalypse.

And the good writer chooses his words for their 'meaning', but that meaning is not a a set, cut-off thing like the move of knight or pawn on a chess-board. It comes up with roots, with associations, with how and where the word is familiarly used, or where it has been used brilliantly or memorably.