Quotes About Writing

After I graduated from Harvard, I enrolled in the school of journalism at Columbia University. I did that for my dad. He wanted his son to be a journalist. I disappointed him. I wrote about sports instead.

When writing comedy, you have to have the confidence to believe that there is only one type of relationship in the world, and we are all having it, that all men behave in the same way and so do all women.

I don't think, generally speaking, people become writers because they were the really good, really cool, attractive kid in class. I'll be honest. This is our revenge for people who were much better looking and more popular than us. I was a bit like that, I suppose.

Marcus de Obregón is appealing and, yes, instructive, but is not entirely successful because the author often forgot he was writing a novel, not his memoirs.

So: an epic novel of the Tathagata? Yes, but not a very good one. Kerouac would have done better.

Thanks to the redundancy of language, yxx cxn xndxrstxnd whxt x xm wrxtxng xvxn xf x rxplxcx xll thx vxwxls wxth xn "x" (t gts lttl hrdr f y dn't vn kn whr th vwls r)

Someone once asked Somerset Maughham if he wrote on a schedule or only when struck by inspiration. "I write only when inspiration strikes," he replied. "Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o'clock sharp.

Had Stendhal believed in eternity? He had written that a person, no

To write about long-dead people is one thing. To write about one's own lifetime is different. And of course I must take care to avoid writing anything that gives offense to the emperor. Yes, I'm finding it difficult. But never fear, I shall finish it, and Philip will be impressed.

Only a generation of readers will spawn a generation of writers.

writing is like dancing, or sports, where the expression of grace come only through movement.

From past experience, it seems that at my rate of writing it takes about a decade to produce enough new essays for assembly in a collection. I hope nevertheless that this will not be my last collection. But given actuarial realities, perhaps this would be a good time for me to add a word of thanks to readers who over many years have put up with my polemics and explanations, and have thereby given me a precious contact with the world beyond physics.

much of the writing of physicists barely reaches the level of prose.

their contemporaries in the West, Charlemagne and his lords, were dabbling in the art of writing their names.

I'm writing a book. I've got the page numbers done.

I'm writing a book. I'm almost finished. I numbered the pages. Now all I have to do is fill them in.

The two hardest things about writing are starting and not stopping.

In moments of reverie; he sometimes wondered whether he himself was but the subject of a lonely pIerson's writing, as Ays and Finnigin were his.

Sometimes the muse sits on my shoulder, but most often not I have a devil of a job tempting her back!

In her dreams Barbara was strong and powerful. She did not see herself as a slim, limpid beauty, but a statuesque valkyrie, who stalked a wild landscape, making things happen and having Experiences. Barbara's imagination was fecund. She did not read most of her fantasies to the other members of her writing group.

For hundreds of years, Casmeer's libido had lain dormant, but now, as if the act of writing had rekindled a forgotten lust, he was moved to inflict his feelings upon his stories. He'd no intention of doing that. Also he felt as if the tales themselves were running away from him. He found it hard to keep them in line.

Barbara Eager, he was sure, considered herself to be an amateur poet, and probably ran a small writing circle in the village. She would have been easy prey, if he'd been interested.

When he felt sexually excited, Casmeer found with some alarm, that he wanted to harm his characters, his self-children. He wanted to squeeze them, to make them bleed. This, he despised in himself, but then considered that as the stories were fictions, it was acceptable for him to exorcise his feelings through them. He did not have to judge himself for his lewd or wicked thoughts.

Sometimes, it seemed almost as if this book wrote itself.