Quotes About Writing

Some people should be paid not to write another novel.

As a child, I wanted only two things - to be left alone to read my library books, and to get away from my provincial hometown and go to London to be a writer. And I always knew that when I got there, I wanted to make loads of money.

really was in a basement, studying the evolution of reproductive behavior in Pimephales promelas (the fathead minnow), and writing was two things to me: a pleasant habit and a way to explore Big Ideas. You

The lack of a free weekend keeps more blockbusters bestsellers from being written than you can imagine.

If you're a woman writer, sometime, somewhere, you will be asked, Do you think of yourself as a writer first, or as a woman first? Look out. Whoever asks this hates and fears both writing and women. (Margaret Atwood)

Two years ago, I was a twenty-nine year old secretary. Now I am a thirty-one year old writer. I get paid very well to sit around in my pajamas and type on my ridiculously fancy iMac, unless I'd rather take a nap. Feel free to hate me -- I certainly would.

If every member of the human race evinced a fondness for literature and even a moderate level of dexterity with the written word, I would be a happier, if not more well-adjusted, man.

You want undergraduates who can write, think, and read? Stop pretending that writing can be taught across the curriculum by geologists and physicists who wouldn't recognize a dependent clause if it bit them on the ass.

he has served for three of his four short years at Payne in administration, directing the undergraduate writing center and the much contested/maligned composition program. (No reasonable person outside a university would believe the teaching of composition to be controversial, but of course it is.) Professor West has an open-door policy

his writing had stalled (the market perhaps saturated at last with egotistical male writers);

Client reports. Jack was a private detective." "I don't understand." "I'm— uh— a ghostwriter.

I write detective novels when I'm not ghostwriting. I'd never gotten any of them published, and that, of course, was the main thing I didn't want to think about. But writing them is what keeps me going.

What doesn't kill us gives us something new to write about.

Writers don't have bad life days; they just have good research days.

A history of literature, unlike history as such, ought to list only victories, for its defeats are no victory for anyone.

A volte scriveva, ma era un'occupazione che lo stancava un po', e poi non concepiva l'idea di gustarsi la gioia di pensare mettendo per iscritto le fantasticherie della mente, a meno che quella fatica non gli avesse permesso di guadagnarsi da vivere. Era convinto che in genere le idee più felici non tollerano di essere espresse, giacché perdono tutta la loro originaria freschezza e appassiscono non appena vengono affidate alla penna. (L'inferno)

ViaÈ›a noastr? e o carte care se scrie singur?. Noi suntem niÈ™te personaje de roman care nu înÈ›eleg întotdeauna prea bine ce vrea autorul.

I am probably exaggerating a little, but I owe my equilibrium to ink and paper.

Notre vie est un livre qui s'écrit tout seul. Nous sommes des personnages de roman qui ne comprennent pas toujours bien ce que veut l'auteur.

We know that attention acts as a lightning rod. Merely by concentrating on something one causes endless analogies to collect around it, even penetrate the boundaries of the subject itself: an experience that we call coincidence, serendipity – the terminology is extensive. My experience has been that in these circular travels what is really significant surrounds a central absence, an absence that, paradoxically, is the text being written or to be written.

Usted escribe, supongo. —No —dijo Oliveira—. Qué voy a escribir, para eso hay que tener alguna certidumbre de haber vivido.

En suma, desde pequeño, mi relación con las palabras, con la escritura, no se diferencia de mi relación con el mundo en general. Yo parezco haber nacido para no aceptar las cosas tal como me son dadas.

Pido lo imposible, lo más inmerecido, lo que me atreví a hacer una vez cuando él vivía: pido que sea su voz la que asome aquí, que sea su mano la que escriba estas líneas. Sé que es absurdo y es imposible, y por eso mismo creo que él escribe esto conmigo, porque nadie supo mejor hasta qué punto lo absurdo y lo imposible serán un día la realidad de los hombres, el futuro por cuya conquista dio su joven, su maravillosa vida.

I think it is vanity to want to put into a story anything but the story itself.