quotations about writing
Ideas are infinite--writers are hardwired to think that way. We keep it fresh by using new people, mixing character types and putting them in a different setting. It's always the first book all over again, but one idea can be told a thousand different ways. There are 88 keys on the piano, but you can make an infinite amount of music from those keys.
NORA ROBERTS
Time Magazine, November 29, 2007
What separates the professionally successful ... from all the rest is their ability to stay steady, to have stamina. It is one thing to write a good sentence, another to write a good book.
KATY LEDERER
interview, Identity Theory, February 12, 2005
Too much is written by the men who can't write about the men who do write.
JACK LONDON
Martin Eden
When I start to write, I don't have any plan at all. I just wait for the story to come. I don't choose what kind of story it is or what's going to happen. I just wait.
HARUKI MURAKAMI
Paris Review, summer 2004
There are two men inside the artist, the poet and the craftsman. One is born a poet. One becomes a craftsman.
EMILE ZOLA
letter to Cezanne
I've never written the things I'd like to write that I've admired all my life. Maybe one never does.
ELIZABETH BISHOP
Conversations with Elizabeth Bishop
Prison always has been a good place for writers, killing, as it does, the twin demons of mobility and diversion.
DAN SIMMONS
Hyperion
I was always fascinated by the fact that you could take paper and ink and create worlds, images, characters. It seemed like magic.
CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON
"Q & A: Author Carlos Ruiz Zafon", Time, June 30, 2009
The novelist is like the conductor of an orchestra, his back to the audience, his face invisible, summoning the experience of music for the people he cannot see. The writer as conductor also gets to compose the music and play all of the instruments, a task less formidable than it seems. What it requires is the conscious practice of providing an extraordinary experience for the reader, who should be oblivious to the fact that he is seeing words on paper.
SOL STEIN
Stein on Writing
It's easy, after all, not to be a writer. Most people aren't writers, and very little harm comes to them.
JULIAN BARNES
Flaubert's Parrot
The funny thing about writing is that whether you're doing it well or you're doing it poorly, it looks the exact same. That is actually one of the main ways that writing is different from ballet dancing.
JOHN GREEN
"July 19: A Day in the Life of a Writer (Who Has No Friends)", YouTube
When you finish one book, you don't want to just write the same book again.
JEFFREY EUGENIDES
Slate, October 10, 2011
Every word written is a net to catch the word that has escaped.
JEANETTE WINTERSON
The Stone Gods
Making a book is a craft, like making a clock; it needs more than native wit to be an author.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Works of the Mind", Les Caractères
Writing is therapy. It's so relieving. I can be super overwhelmed with life and work or whatever is going on and I can take 10 or 15 minutes out of the day to put all of the thoughts I'm having out on paper. Not all the time the person I can talk to and not judge me. Writing and my journals are my best friend.
DELICIA RASHAD
"Local Poet Releases Latest Book on Life, Love and Tea", San Diego Voice and Viewpoint, March 30, 2017
The art is never about what you write about. The art is about how you write about what you write about.
CHRIS ABANI
attributed, Stylistic Approaches to Nigerian Fiction
The excitement I get from writing is finding out each day what happens next.
CHARLES DE LINT
"One Thing Leads to Another: An Interview with Charles de Lint", The Yalsa Hub, September 19, 2013
But most important of all is the structure of the incidents. For Tragedy is an imitation, not of men, but of an action and of life, and life consists in action.
ARISTOTLE
Poetics
Writers, like teeth, are divided into incisors and grinders.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Estimates of Some Englishmen and Scotchmen
Fiction is based on reality unless you're a fairy-tale artist, you have to get your knowledge of life from somewhere. You have to know the material you're writing about before you alter it.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON
interview, Associated Press, 2003