Quotes About Writing

She had an unequalled gift, usually pen in hand, of squeezing big mistakes into opportunities.

I adore adverbs; they are the only qualifications I really much respect.

It is as difficult to suppose a person intending to write a modern English, as to suppose him writing an ancient English, novel; that is a label which begs the question. One writes the novel, one paints the picture, of one's language and of one's time, and calling it modern English will not, alas! make the difficult task any easier.

In literature we move through a blest world in which we know nothing except by style, but in which everything is saved by it.

He is trying to recapture his innocence, yet all he succeeds in doing (by writing) is to inoculate the world with a virus of his disillusionment.

I think someday you're going to be a great writer, he said. But he added maliciously, first you'll have to suffer a bit. I mean really suffer, because you don't know what the word means yet. You only think you've suffered. You've got to fall in love first.

There is the happiness which comes from creative effort. The joy of dreaming, creating, building, whether in painting a picture, writing an epic, singing a song, composing a symphony, devising new invention, creating a vast industry.

The truly great writer does not want to write. He wants the world to be a place in which he can live the life of the imagination.

The truly great writer does not want to write: he wants the world to be a place in which he can life the life of the imagination. The first quivering word he puts to paper is the word of the wounded angel: pain.

With every line I write I kill off the artist in me. With every line it is either murder in the first degree or suicide. I do not want to give hope to others, nor to inspire others. If we knew what it meant to be inspired we would not inspire. We would simply be.

This was the sort of ebullience and élan I prayed for when I felt the desire to write. I used to sit down and wait for this to happen. But it never did happen- not this way. It happened afterwards, sometimes when I had left the machine and gone for a walk. Yes, suddenly it would come on, like an attack, pell-mell, from every direction, a veritable inundation, an avalanche- and there I was, helpless, miles away from the typewriter, not a piece of paper in my pocket.

There is an ordinary kind of forgetting and a special kind: the latter is due, more than likely to the vice of living in two worlds at once. One of the consequences of this tendency is that you live everything out innumerable times. Worse, whatever you succeed in transmitting to paper seems but an infinitesimal fraction of what you've already written in your head.

In this chthonian world the only thing of importance is orthography and punctuation. It doesn't matter what the nature of the calamity is, only whether it is spelled right.

A child has no need to write, he is innocent. A man writes to throw off the poison which he has accumulated because of his false way of life.

Dormir se puede casi en cualquier parte, pero hay que tener un sitio para trabajar. Hasta una novela mala requiere una silla para sentarse y un poquito de intimidad.

Between laughs I could hear my mother's words ringing in my ears. "Why don't you write something that will sell?

The truly great writer does not want to write: he wants the world to be a place in which he can live the life of the imagination. The first quivering word he puts to paper is the word of the wounded angel: pain.

I like the monologue even more than the duet, when it is good. It's like watching a man write a book expressly for you: he writes it, reads it aloud, acts it, revises it, savours it, enjoys it, enjoys your enjoyment of it, and then tears it up and throws it to the winds. It's a sublime performance, because while he's going through with it you are God for him — unless you happen to be an insensitive and impatient dolt. But in that case the kind of monologue I refer to never happens.

Passing beneath the dance hall, thinking again of this book, I realized suddenly that our life had come to an end: I realized that the book I was planning was nothing more than a tomb in which to bury her - and the me which had belonged to her. That was some time ago, and ever since I have been trying to write it. Why is it so difficult? Why? Because the idea of an end is intolerable to me.

La mayor parte de la escritura se hace lejos de la máquina de escribir.

I can never go back on what I've written. If it was not good, it was true; if it was not artistic, it was sincere; if it was in bad taste, it was on the side of life.

I had to learn, as Balzac did, that one must write volumes before signing ones own name.

the best way to get over a woman is to turn her into literature

Vreau s? ucid c?rÈ›i,scriitori,editori,cititori.A scrie pentru public nu înseamn? absolut nimic pentru mine.Eu aÈ™ vrea s? scriu pentru nebuni- sau pentru îngeri.