Quotes About Writing

Writing is the thing that props me up.

La atmósfera es siempre el elemento más importante, por cuanto el criterio final de autenticidad de un texto no reside en su argumento, sino en la creación de un estado de ánimo determinado.

I have no taste for either poverty or honest labor, so writing is the only recourse left for me.

I've always considered writing the most hateful kind of work. I suspect it's a bit like fucking, which is only fun for amateurs. Old whores don't do much giggling.

I haven't found a drug yet that can get you anywhere near as high as a sitting at a desk writing, trying to imagine a story no matter how bizarre it is, [or] going out and getting into the weirdness of reality and doing a little time on the Proud Highway.

I'm a word freak. I like words. I've always compared writing to music. That's the way I feel about good paragraphs. When it really works, it's like music.

I've always considered writing the most hateful kind of work. I suspect it's a bit like fucking — which is fun only for amateurs. Old whores don't do much giggling. Nothing is fun when you have to do it — over and over, again and again...

Writing is the flip side of sex - it's only good when it's over.

The only way to write honestly about the scene is to be part of it. If there is one quick truism about psychedelic drugs, it is that anyone who tries to write about them without first-expierience is a fool and a fraud.

Not a wasted word. This has been a main point to my literary thinking all my life.

If the thing bites down much harder I might wig out and demand beer... stay away from the phone, watch the red arrow... this typewriter is keeping me on my rails, without it I'd be completely adrift and weird.

I haven't found a drug yet that can get you anywhere near as high as sitting at a desk writing.

Mother of babbling god!" I muttered. The word "deadline" caused my brain to seize up momentarily. Deadline? Yes. Tomorrow morning, about 15 more hours… .

Supongo que de ese sentimiento de soledad nacen las preguntas que impulsan a escribir, en la búsqueda de respuestas se gestan los libros.

La escritura es una larga introspección, es un viaje hacia las cavernas más oscuras de la conciencia, una lenta meditación

Half the fun of writing a novel is finding out from other people later on what you actually meant.

As a writer, you get to play, you get to alter time, you get to come up with the smart lines and the clever comebacks you wish you'd thought of.

God forbid that I should ever suffer the shame of publishing a book for money, or of having one of my family so demean themselves. How can one tell who might read it? No worthy book has ever been written for gain, I think;

Father is a school manqué ... He always wanted to write books. But he became rich instead, so is not allowed.

WHEN THE Diamond Smugglers was first published Ian Fleming had a copy bound for his own library. On the flyleaf, as was his custom, he wrote a short paragraph describing its genesis. It started with the alarming words: "This was written in 2 weeks in Tangiers, April 1957." As the ensuing tale of woe made clear, he didn't consider it his finest fortnight. He ended with the dismissive verdict: "It

At that moment, the urge to be writing was stronger than any notion she had of what she might write.

How can a novelist achieve atonement when with her absolute power of deciding outcomes, she is also god?

In a story you only had to wish, you only had to write it down and you could have the world.

Each day he made attempts … but produced nothing but quotations, thinly or well disguised, of his own work. Nothing sprang free of its own idiom, its own authority, to offer the element of surprise that would be the guarantee of originality.