Quotes About Writing

There are a lot of people in this country who really like my writing. And a lot of writers respect me. But the so-called establishment? They hate me.

When I write, the story is always uppermost in my mind, and I feel that everything must be sacrificed to it. All elegant passages, all the curious details, all the so-called beautiful writing - if they are not truly relevant to what I am trying to say, then they have to go.

TotuÈ™i, tot ceea ce pot s? realizeze scriitorii în general este s? ridice în aer un deget sensibil È™i s? presimt? o schimbare a vremii; foarte rar ei înÈ™iÈ™i provoac? schimbarea.

The shifting sands of the world... show how much the surrealists were drawn towards an interrogation of what reality actually is. Unlike fabulists of whatever hue, there is a materiality in surrealist writing that resolutely keeps it, one might say, 'down to earth'.

My response to those asking how they can become a food writer is the same: first, become a writer.

Instead he created an enormous body of prose that, at its best, sings.

I speak to the paper, as I speak to the first person I meet.

how I would hate the reputation of being clever at writing but stupid and useless at everything else! I would rather be stupid at both than to choose to employ my good qualities as badly as that.

When a man is commonplace in discussion yet valued for what he writes that shows that his talents lie in his borrowed sources not in himself.

Livet består av en del galskap, og en del visdom; den som bare skriver ærbødig og konvensjonelt, utelater mer enn halvparten.

Raymond Roussel] said that after his first book he expected that the next morning there would be a kind of aura around his person and that everyone in the street would be able to see that he had written a book. This is the obscure desire harboured by everyone who writes. It is true that the first text one writes is neither written for others, nor because one is what one is: one writes to become other than what one is. One tries to modify one's way of being through the act of writing.

As soon as you start writing, even if it is under your real name, you start to function as somebody slightly different, as a writer. You establish from yourself to yourself continuities and a level of coherence which is not quite the same as your real life... All this ends up constituting a kind of neo-identity which is not identical to your identity as a citizen or your social identity, Besides you know this very well, since you want to protect your private life.

In writing, the point is not to manifest or exalt the act of writing, nor is it to pin a subject within language; it is, rather, a question of creating a space into which the writing subject constantly disappears.

When I write, I do it above all to change myself and not to think the same thing as before

Writing unfolds like a game that invariably goes beyond its own rules and transgresses its limits. In writing, the point is not to manifest or exalt the act of writing, nor is it to pin a subject within language; it is rather a question of creating a space into which the writing subject constantly disappears.

I have not tried to write the history of that language, but rather the archaeology of that silence.

That is not all, however: this relationship between writing and death is also manifested in the effacement of the writing subject's individual characteristics. Using all the contrivances that he steps up between himself and what he writes, the writing subject cancels out the signs of his particular individuality. As a result, the mark of the writer is reduced to nothing more that the singularity of his absence; he must assume the role of the dead man in the game of writing.

Kafamda doÄŸruluÄŸunu kan?tlad???m bir ÅŸey olduÄŸu için yazm?yorum. Yazmak, baÅŸta fark edemediÄŸim bir ÅŸeyi sonunda bulmam? saÄŸl?yor.

Si vous saviez, lorsque vous commencez à écrire un livre, ce que vous allez dire à la fin, croyez-vous que vous auriez le courage de l'écrire?

If you knew when you began a book what you would say at the end, do you think that you would have the courage to write it? What is true for writing and for a love relationship is true also for life. The game is worthwhile insofar as we don't know what will be the end.

On peut presque tout faire sans lumière sauf écrire. Ecrire demande des lueurs. Vivre se suffit d'ombre, lire exige la clarté. Fast alles kann man ohne Licht tun, außer Schreiben. Zum Schreiben ist Licht nötig. Zum Leben genügt Dunkelheit; Lesen braucht Helligkeit.

Thumbelina, along with her brothers and sisters, is now producing, like a choir, a background noise that drowns out the voice of writing.

When the old Ptolemaic model had accumulated so many epicycles that the movement of the stars became complicated and unreadable, a change became necessary. The center of the system was moved toward the sun, and everything became clear again. The written code of Hammurabi no doubt put an end to the socio-juridical difficulties that had arisen in oral law. Our own complexities come from a crisis of writing.

Confession: I don't want to be one of my characters. I'm mean to them sometimes. Really mean.