WRITING QUOTES II
quotations about writing
A line will take us hours maybe;
Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought,
Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
"Adam's Curse", In the Seven Woods
Writing is rewriting. It's all about building off of what you have and making it better.
DASHA FAYVINOVA
"9 Reasons Joining A Writing Group Is One Of The Best Ways A Writer Can Grow", Bustle, February 8, 2016
Whoop! 6K words, 21 pages, and 8 miles on the treadmill -- DONE! #ProductiveDay #LetThereBeIceCream
VICTORIA LAURIE
Twitter post, December 21, 2014
With a practice of writing comes a certain important integrity. A culture filled with bloggers thinks differently about politics or public affairs, if only because more have been forced through the discipline of showing in writing why A leads to B.
LAWRENCE LESSIG
Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy
Metaphors get under your skin by ghosting right past the logical mind.
JANE HIRSHFIELD
"The Art of Metaphor"
It may appear flippant to tell aspiring writers that if they want to learn to write well, they should begin by writing: something, anything. That's how the best writers started and that's how all of us continue to write.
ALI MADEEH HASHMI
"The art of writing", The News on Sunday, March 11, 2017
I've never been able to write a book without one very strong character in my rucksack.
JOHN LE CARRÉ
interview, The Paris Review, summer 1997
The good writing of any age has always been the product of someone's neurosis, and we'd have a mighty dull literature if all the writers that came along were a bunch of happy chuckleheads.
WILLIAM STYRON
attributed, Writers at Work
If you will describe the people--nay, if you will write for the people, you must be one of the people.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
A little while back I observed that many people are put off writing because they fear committing one or more of the innumerable errors that seem to lie in wait for them at every step of composition. But if one understands that a sentence is a structure of logical relationships and that the number of relationships involved is finite, one understands too that there is only one error to worry about, the error of being illogical, and only one rule to follow: make sure that every component of your sentence is related to the other components in a way that is clear and unambiguous (unless ambiguity is what you are aiming at).
STANLEY FISH
How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One
Sex has to be good for both partners. That is also the key to writing both fiction and nonfiction. It has to be a good experience for both partners, the writer and the reader, and it is a source of distress to me to observe how frequently writers ignore the pleasure of their partners.
SOL STEIN
Stein on Writing
Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader, not the fact that it's raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.
E. L. DOCTOROW
attributed, Stein on Writing
A true piece of writing is a dangerous thing. It can change your life.
TOBIAS WOLFF
Old School
It's hard work, writing, you know. Honestly, a fight every day against your own limitations. You have to squeeze books out of your brain, you're constantly trying to solve challenges. I think most writers enjoy the feeling of having written something, rather than the process of writing it.
CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON
"Carlos Ruiz Zafon's love letter to literature", New Zealand Listener, March 14, 2013
I am not at all in a humor for writing; I must write on till I am.
JANE AUSTEN
letter to Cassandra Austen, October 26, 1813
My theory of the uses of fiction is that beneficent fiction calls into full life our total range of imaginative faculties and gives us a heightened sense of our personal, social and human reality.
CHINUA ACHEBE
Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays
Writing is a profession you can practice while upside down and experiencing total blackout in a cave. You just use the mental recorder instead of pen and paper ... or portable ... and hope you find a use for the experience.
C. J. CHERRYH
interview, SFF World, January 1, 2000
Before I write down one word, I have to have the character in my mind through and through. I must penetrate into the last wrinkle of his soul.
HENRIK IBSEN
letter to Munich editor Georg Conrad
Writing keeps me at my desk, constantly trying to write a perfect sentence. It is a great privilege to make one's living from writing sentences. The sentence is the greatest invention of civilization. To sit all day long assembling these extraordinary strings of words is a marvelous thing. I couldn't ask for anything better. It's as near to godliness as I can get.... The great thrill is when a sentence that starts out being completely plain suddenly begins to sing, rising far above itself and above any expectation I might have had for it. That's what keeps me going on those dark December days.
JOHN BANVILLE
The Paris Review, spring 2009
The author should die once he has finished writing. So as not to trouble the path of the text.
UMBERTO ECO
postscript, The Name of the Rose