Quotes About Writing

If you don't think there is magic in writing, you probably won't write anything magical.

Writers need their writing; they need their imaginary worlds in order to find piece in, or make sense of, the real world.

Maybe he should phone it all in to Andy Rooney.

Not all of Derrida's writing is to everyone's taste. He had an irritating habit of overusing the rhetorical question, which lends itself easily to parody: 'What is it, to speak? How can I even speak of this? Who is this I who speaks of speaking?

This book was written using 100% recycled words.

The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.

There's no such thing as writer's block. That was invented by people in California who couldn't write.

They think written words are even more powerful,' whispered the toad. 'They think all writing is magic. Words worry them. See their swords? They glow blue in the presence of lawyers.

Let grammar, punctuation, and spelling into your life! Even the most energetic and wonderful mess has to be turned into sentences.

Writing is the most fun you can have by yourself.

Science fiction is] out in the mainstream now. You can tell by the way mainstream literary authors pillage SF while denying they're writing it!

He'd heard that writers spent all day in their dressing gowns drinking champagne. This is, of course, absolutely true.

First draft: let it run. Turn all the knobs up to 11. Second draft: hell. Cut it down and cut it into shape. Third draft: comb its nose and blow its hair. I usually find that most of the book will have handed itself to me on that first draft.

And I went on reading; and, since if you read enough books you overflow, I eventually became a writer.

It's a bad case o' the thinkin' he's caught, missus. When a man starts messin' wi' the readin' and the writin' then he'll come doon with a dose o' the thinkin' soon enough. I'll fetch some o' the lads and we'll hold his heid under water until he stops doin' it, 'tis the only cure. It can kill a man, the thinkin'.

I just rearrange words into a pleasing order for money.

I certainly don't sit down and plan a book out before I write it. There's a phrase I use called The Valley Full of Clouds. Writing a novel is as if you are going off on a journey across a valley. The valley is full of mist, but you can see the top of a tree here and the top of another tree over there. And with any luck you can see the other side of the valley. But you cannot see down into the mist. Nevertheless, you head for the first tree.

More than half the skill of writing lies in tricking the book out of your own head.

Omens were all very well, but sometimes it would help if people just wrote things down.

Writing stays. It fastens words down. A man can speak his mind and some nasty wee scuggan will write it down and who knows what he'll do with those words? Ye might as weel nail a man's shadow tae the wall!

I think it is just a matter of getting into the mind of the writer," Vetinari went on, looking at a letter covered with grubby fingerprints and what looked like the remains of someone's breakfast. He added: "In some cases, I imagine, there is a lot of room.

An' writin' even goes on sayin' a man's wurds after he's deid ! Ye cannae tell me that's right!

The pen is mightier than the sword… if the sword is very small and the pen is very sharp.

The R is the wrong way roond and you left the A and a Y out of Anybody,' said Jeannie, because it is a wife's job to stop her husband actually exploding with pride. 'Ach, wumman, I didna' ken which way the fat man wuz walkin',' said Rob, airly waving a hand. 'Ye canna trust the fat man. That's the kind of thing us nat'ral writin' folk knows about. One day he might walk this way, next day he might walk that way.