Writers On Writing Quotes

But I did not want to be good. I wanted to be a writer.

Begin to write, your heart will flow with sacred words.

Because. Everything worth anything takes time.

She loved me deeply, madly and passionately. She knew no other way!

Sometimes you have to go a little crazy before you can find sanity. I think I'm close.

Growing up, I used to climb out my window onto the roof and look up at the stars. There, in the quiet, I would write stories inside my head.

If you live with dogs, you'll never run out of things to write about.

There is no literature and art without paranoia. Probably there would be even civilization. Paranoia is the world. It is the attempt to make sense of what has not.

I am no writer. Her sparkling eyes made my fingers write words in the sand. Her radiant smile made my pen write words in the air. Her beautiful soul made my typewriter type poems for eternity. I am no writer.

Hey Revision. You can be a pain but you do make Book better.

Lately, I usually write at the desk in my living-room or bedroom. From time to time, our red and stripy cat named Foxy decides to be my companion, poking his curious caramel-colored nose to the screen, watching me typing, and making attempts to put his paws on the keyboard despite the fact that he knows he is not allowed to; he also loves to arrange “sunbathing sessions for himself, purring joyfully while lying with his belly up under the lamp placed to the left of my computer; and, of course, the cat can’t wait for when I happen to have a snack, to beg for some treats that seem to him tastiest if eaten from a caring human’s hand.

Word-Power'Being stuck in my room,I've become a world traveler.If you wonder how...just guess how I've reached you right now

When I write, I can be hear. And known. But nobody has to look at me. Nobody has to see me at all.

A writer's life is never boring when you have imaginary friends to play with!

I write to believe in goodness.

When entering a library, I never forget to bow down!

Writers are magicians. They write down words, and, if they're good, you believe that what they write is real, just as you believe a good magician has pulled the coins out of your ear, or made his assistant disappear.

Being an author is to have a toe in the creative pool and a foot in the vat of commerce.

Writing for the sake of writing, writing that draws its credibility from its very existence, is a foreign idea to most Americans. As a culture, we want cash on the barrel head. We want writing to earn dollars and sense so that it makes sense to us. We have a conviction—which is naive and misplaced—that being published has to do with being “good” while not being published has to do with being “amateur.” ...“Did you write today?”“Yes.”“Then you’re a writer today.”It would be lovely if being a writer were a permanent state that we could attain to. It’s not, or if it is, the permanence comes posthumously.A page at a time, a day at a time, is the way we must live our writing lives. Credibility lies in the act of writing. That is where the dignity is. That is where the final “credit” must come from.

Life always has some surprises up its sleeve!

I have never found a painter more beautiful than his paintings nor a writer who was more expressive than his works. While one got his hands dirty, other made the paper dirty to create masterpieces!

Writer's block is just another name for fear.

But if you needed to HAVE AN IDEA, boredom could be to a roadblocked novel what chemotherapy was to a cancer patient.

For nearly two centuries the popular spirit of each succeeding generation has tended more and more to the view that the mysteries of life will eventually fall before the mind of man. Many modern novelists have been more concerned with the processes of consciousness than with the objective world outside the mind. In twentieth-century fiction it increasingly happens that a meaningless, absurd world impinges upon the sacred consciousness of author or character; author and character seldom now go out to explore and penetrate a world in which the sacred is reflected.

Writers haven't got any rockets to blast off. We don't even trundle the most insignificant auxiliary vehicle. We haven't got any military might. So what can literature do in the face of the merciless onslaught of open violence? One word of truth outweighs the whole world.

Life is a collection of memories and feelings. Mawkish sentimentally urges us to engage in artistic overtures, we yearn to share with other people a melody of rudimentary experiences and respond to a stabilizing tune strung together with a shared ethos. We walk in parallel strides with our brethren seeking out equivalent affirmations of our being. We long to shout out to the world that we once walked this earth; we seek to leave in our wake traces of our pithy habitation. Our unfilled longing propels us into committing senseless acts of self-sabotage and then we desperately seek redemption from our slippery selves by building monuments to the human spirit. We employ a bewildering blend of conscious and unconscious materials to construct synoptic testaments to our temporal existence. We labor on the canvas of our choosing to scrawl our inimitable mark, fanatically toiling to escape a sentence of total obliteration along with our impending mortality.

He, the true writer, is the department store dummy at the very center of the whole establishment, the one left alone on display all night, a price tag stapled to every piece of clothing they’ve yanked onto him, binoculars and frog flippers included. He is the neutral, generic human form, the gray center who must always assume disguises — in order to be seen and, therefore, to feel himself.

. If you want to write, just write anything that comes into your mind. You will be surprised at how you can force inspiration to stand on your side.

As writers we intend to make a difference, to alter people's lives for the greater good. . .this is why we write, to have an impact on society, to put a personal stamp on history. . .Art and literature are the legacies we leave to succeeding generations. We'll be forgotten, but our books and essays, our stories and poems can survive us. . .

Do you know why I believe in the novel? It’s a democratic shout. Anybody can write a great novel, one great novel, almost any amateur off the street. I believe this, George. Some nameless drudge, some desperado with barely a nurtured dream can sit down and find his voice and luck out and do it. Something so angelic it makes your jaw hang open. The spray of talent, the spray of ideas. One thing unlike another, one voice unlike the next. Ambiguities, contradictions, whispers, hints. And this is what you want to destroy.

Why do I write? Out of fear. Out of fear that the memory of the people I write about might go lost. Out of fear that the memory of myself might get lost. Or even just to be shielded by a story, to slip inside a story and stop being recognizable, controllable, subject to blackmail.

I don’t put that pressure on myself (to write every day), but I do tend to write every day. It’s not pressure—it’s pressure release.

You can edit what you write. Why not edit what you say? If it hurts somebody, you can still offer an apology or withdraw your statements

When I told my teachers I wanted to be a writer, alot of them encouraged me to lower my expectations and to be more realistic. So I rode away on my magical, winged horse, spraying faerie dust behind me, and laughing manically as I went.

So much of reading and writing to me is about being elsewhere, no matter how much I love where I am.

Why do writers write? Why do actors act? Why do painters paint? It doesn't pay much, unless you're very successful. It's who we are.

Writing is exposing yourself to strangers

Just being a writer allows one the maturity to have random conversations with random strangers!

Either I love someone completely, totally and madly or not at all!

Rejection is no badge of honour.

Writing is sharing. You share what you have. Great writers have more to share

You know you are a writer when characters inside your brain keep demanding, 'This is my story! Now tell it or I will never leave you alone!

There are times when I'm writing where time feels irrelevant. Those are the moments I know I'm creating magic.

Never stop when you are tired. Stop when you are done!

I believe you can consider yourself a successful prose writer when the number of words you put on a page each day is equal to, or greater than, the number of milligrams of mind-altering chemicals you ingest in that day. (Note: this rule does not apply to poets who write in the short-form. You, my boys and girls, are free as birds!)

Great characters- They are pivotal for a great plot. THEN a solid plot: Why then? If you do not have great characters it is impossible to create a good plot, nonetheless a solid one. Once you have built great characters for the scenes, there you have it. It’s just like the movies, you cannot have a great film if the characters are frail and their lines are weak as well. I guess great world-building comes along with a good plot. If there is something that will work fine in a novel is how you will develop from the theme. You’ve got to establish a good timeline, and from there it comes a world. You see the technical matters don’t match or matter as much to me. Even a poorly written story, if there is a good plot and great characters on it will make a divine combination There are simply many cases of it over the mainstream and that even reached the big screen.

Each time I write, I reaffirm my soul.

The best kind of day is a writing day

Over the years I've come to realize that in a broad sense I'm interested in power and politics. I'm interested in how individuals try to eke out some wiggle room within these large institutions . . . how they eke out some measure of freedom and personal space and integrity . . . trying to negotiate their way toward some sort of, if not happiness, then at least accommodation or peace with themselves.

If you see it in Strunk and White it's so.

I'm trying to give my character voice but he won't speak.

Writing is not a hobby. It's the only way I get to shut up the demons in my head.

The hardest thing about being a writer is convincing your wife that lying on the sofa is work.

There's a difference between writing for a living and writing forlife. If you write for a living, you make enormous compromises....If you write for life, you'll work hard; you'll do what's honest,not what pays

Write like a motherfucker.

The writer sat besides the weeping Gilgamesh, swam out of all the unsinkable ships sank. He was there, and he wasn't. Like a naturalist observing the tarn of life from an unseen bubble of neutrality.

Writing is not a searching about in the daily experience for apt similes and pretty thoughts and images… It is not a conscious recording of the day’s experiences ‘freshly and with the appearance of reality’… The writer of imagination would find himself released from observing things for the purpose of writing them down later. He would be there to enjoy, to taste, to engage the free world, not a world which he carries like a bag of food, always fearful lest he drop something or someone get more than he.

If you're a writer, you'll know it by the distinct feeling of only being able to breathe properly when alone with your characters. All other times, I'm panting--just pining for the next time I can be with them.

Putting pen to paper without first deciding the route and pace at which to scribe is like setting off on a bicycle without first checking the tyres.

Writing is probably the only form of art, through which you can express, which you would otherwise wouldn't dare to say in person....