Quotes About Writing

I think the thing that I most deplore about American writing… is a lack of craftsmanship. It comes right down to this — the lack of absolute love for language, the lack of sitting down and working a good idea into a gem of an idea.

We don't write in the first grade, we print. You won't learn to write until you're in the third grade.

Young ladies sketched, did watercolors, wrote short paragraphs of imaginative prose. To Alexandra, there was a distinct and distasteful difference between one who paints and a painter, one who writes and a writer.

Any writer worth his salt writes to please himself.

To be a serious writer requires discipline that is iron fisted. It's sitting down and doing it, whether you think you have it in you or not. Every day.

Writing is a process of self-discipline you must learn before you can call yourself a writer. There are people who write, but I think they're quite different from people who must write. From a 1964 interview.

Writing is a process of self-discipline you must learn before you can call yourself a writer. There are people who write, but I think they're quite different from people who must write. From a 1964 interview.

There's no such thing as perfect writing, just like there's no such thing as perfect despair.

Which is why I am writing this book. To think. To understand. It just happens to be the way I'm made. I have to write things down to feel I fully comprehend them.

It just happens to be the way that I'm made. I have to write things down to feel I fully comprehend them.

According to Chekhov, Tamaru said, rising from his chair, once a gun appears in a story, it has to be fired. Meaning what? Meaning, don't bring unnecessary props into a story. If a pistol appears, it has to be fired at some point. Chekhov liked to write stories that did away with all useless ornamentation.

Writing novels is much the same. You gather up bones and make your gate, but no matter how wonderful the gate might be, that alone doesn't make it a living breathing novel. A story is not something of this world. A real story requires a kind of magical baptism to link the world on this side with the world on the other side.

I often recall these words when I am writing, and I think to myself, "It's true. There aren't any new words. Our job is to give new meanings and special overtones to absolutely ordinary words." I find the thought reassuring. It means that vast, unknown stretches still lie before us, fertile territories just waiting for us to cultivate them.

How wonderful it is to be able to write someone a letter! To feel like conveying your thoughts to a person, to sit at your desk and pick up a pen, to put your thoughts into words like this is truly marvelous.

It was as if I were writing letters to hold together the pieces of my crumbling life.

Writers have to keep on writing if they want to mature, like caterpillars endlessly chewing on leaves.

A short story I have written long ago would barge into my house in the middle of the night, shake me awake and shout, 'Hey,this is no time for sleeping! You can't forget me, there's still more to write!' Impelled by that voice, I would find myself writing a novel. In this sense, too, my short stories and novels connect inside me in a very natural, organic way.

Exerting yourself to the fullest within your individual limits: that's the essence of running, and a metaphor for life—-and for me, for writing as well.

Writing things was important, wasn't it? Nakata asked. 'Yes, it was. The process of writing was important. Even though the finished product is completely meaningless.

It might be a little silly for someone getting to be my age to put this into words, but I just want to make sure I get the facts down clearly : I'm the kind of person who likes to be by himself. To put a finer point on it, I'm the type of person who doesn't find it painful to be alone. I find spending an hour or two everyday running alone, not speaking to anyone as well as four of five hours at my desk, to be neither difficult or boring.

You like to write. It's the single most important quality for someone who wants to be a writer. But not in itself enough.

Whether in music or in fiction, the most basic thing is rhythm. Your style needs to have good, natural, steady rhythm, or people won't keep reading your work.

My only passions were books and music. As you might guess, I led a lonely life… Not that I knew what I wanted in life - I didn't. I loved reading novels to distraction, but didn't write well enough to be a novelist; being an editor or a critic was out, too, since my tastes ran to the extremes. Novels should be for pure personal enjoyment, I decided, not part of your work or study. That's why I didn't study literature

I find the act of writing very painful. I can go a whole month without managing a single line, or write three days and nights straight, only to find the whole thing has missed the mark. At the same time, though, I love writing. Ascribing meaning to life is a piece of cake compared to actually living it.