WRITING QUOTES XXIII

quotations about writing

After you have written a thing and you reread it, there is always the temptation to fix it up, to improve it, to remove its poison, blunt its sting.

JEAN COCTEAU

The Paris Review, summer-fall, 1964


My approach to revision hasn't changed much over the years. I know there are writers who do it as they go along, but my method of attack has always been to plunge in and go as fast as I can, keeping the edge of my narrative blade as sharp as possible by constant use, and trying to outrun the novelist's most insidious enemy, which is doubt.

STEPHEN KING

foreword, The Gunslinger

Tags: Stephen King


So much of a novelist's writing, as I have said, takes place in the unconscious: in those depths the last word is written before the first word appears on the paper. We remember details of our story, we do not invent them.

GRAHAM GREENE

The End of the Affair


It's not the word made flesh we want in writing, in poetry and fiction, but the flesh made word.

WILLIAM H. GASS

On Being Blue


I made up my mind long ago to follow one cardinal rule in all my writing -- to be clear. I have given up all thought of writing poetically or symbolically or experimentally, or in any of the other modes that might (if I were good enough) get me a Pulitzer prize. I would write merely clearly and in this way establish a warm relationship between myself and my readers, and the professional critics -- Well, they can do whatever they wish.

ISAAC ASIMOV

introduction, Nemesis

Tags: Isaac Asimov


After a few days of writing I am as happy to see people as if I've been marooned on a desert island for a month.

ROSEMARY JENKINSON

"Writing is not about youth but about spark", Irish Times, March 27, 2017


Belief in one's identity as a poet or writer prior to the acid test of publication is as naïve and harmless as the youthful belief in one's immortality ... and the inevitable disillusionment is just as painful.

DAN SIMMONS

Hyperion


You get a lot of narrative energy from people who make really big mistakes, who act against their best interests, who do things that turn out to have serious consequences. It's very hard make a story out of people doing the right thing over and over again.

KELLY LINK

"A Vampire is a Flexible Metaphor: An Interview with Kelly Link", Gigantic Magazine, October 23, 2013

Tags: Kelly Link


I write what I want to write. Period. I don't write novels-for-hire using media tie-in characters, I don't write suspense novels or thrillers. I write horror. And if no one wants to buy my books, I'll just keep writing them until they do sell--and get a job at Taco Bell in the meantime.

BENTLEY LITTLE

"The Summoning: An Interview with Bentley Little", Giants of the Genre

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After being turned down by numerous publishers, he decided to write for posterity.

GEORGE ADE

"The Fable of the Bohemian Who Had Hard Luck", Fables in Slang

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It is because we have had such great writers in the past that a writer is driven far out past where he can go, out to where no one can help him.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY

Nobel Prize speech, December 10, 1954


The responsibility of the writer is to be a sort of demonic social critic -- to present the world and people in it as he sees it and say, "Do you like it? If you don't like it, change it."

EDWARD ALBEE

interview with Digby Diehl, 1963


If you want to write ... You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads.

RAY BRADBURY

attributed, Words from the Wise

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I don't believe in the notion that some characters have lives of their own and the author follows after them. The author has to be careful not to force the character to do something that would go against the logic of that character's personality, but the character does not have independence. The character is trapped in the author's hand, in my hand, but he is trapped in a way he does not know he is trapped. The characters are on strings, but the strings are loose; the characters enjoy the illusion of freedom, of independence, but they cannot go where I do not want them to go. When that happens, the author must pull on the string and say to them, I am in charge here.

JOSÉ SARAMAGO

The Paris Review, winter 1998

Tags: José Saramago


Without a pen in my hand I can't think.

JOHN LE CARRÉ

interview, The Paris Review, summer 1997

Tags: John le Carré


The trouble with writing fiction is that it has to make sense, whereas real life doesn't. It's incredibly annoying for us scribblers.

IAIN M. BANKS

"Iain Banks: The Final Interview", The Guardian, June 14, 2013

Tags: Iain M. Banks


How one writes is a bit of a mystery to oneself. You just do it. My experience is that I sit down and write and I make it sound right to me, or sound good or interesting. And that's it.

ADAM PHILLIPS

"Poetry as Therapy", The Guardian, March 29, 2012

Tags: Adam Phillips


Getting out of bed of a morning has never been a problem, but I've noticed of late that my writing is better in the afternoon. The mornings are methodical, when all the blockwork and first-fix stuff takes place. The ornamentation or even de-ornamentation -- the things that separate writing from writing -- don't seem possible until later in the day, when I've established some perspective.

SIMON ARMITAGE

"Language is my enemy -- I spend my life battling with it", The Guardian, March 25, 2017


The role of the writer is not to say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say. Most of the writing today which is called fiction contains such a poverty of language, such triteness, that it is a shrunken, diminished world we enter, poorer and more formless than the poorest cripple deprived of ears and eyes and tongue. The writer's responsibility is to increase, develop our senses, expand our vision, heighten our awareness and enrich our articulateness.

ANAÏS NIN

The Diary of Anaïs Nin


As for the story, whether the poet takes it ready made or constructs it for himself, he should first sketch its general outline, and then fill in the episodes and amplify in detail.

ARISTOTLE

Poetics

Tags: Aristotle