quotations about writing
Failure has been my best friend as a writer. It tests you, to see if you have what it takes to see it through.
MARKUS ZUSAK
"Why I Write", The Guardian, March 28, 2008
Be a mere assistant to your unconscious. Do only half the work. The rest will do itself.
JEAN COCTEAU
Diary of an Unknown
All stories are about wolves. All worth repeating, that is. Anything else is sentimental drivel.
MARGARET ATWOOD
The Blind Assassin
A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul, and that, I am sure, is why he does it.
ROALD DAHL
Boy
Writing is a weird thing because we can read, we know how to write a sentence. It's not like a trumpet where you have to get some skill before you can even produce a sound. It's misleading because it's hard to make stories. It seems like it should be easy to do but it's not. The more you write, the better you're going to get. Write and write and write. Try not to be hard on yourself.
GAIL CARSON LEVINE
interview, RIF Reading Planet
Writing a killer first line to a novel is an art form in which there are a few masters and a great many apprentices.
CHUCK WENDIG
"25 Things to Know about Writing the First Chapter of Your Novel", Terrible Minds
When I write I don't aim to shock people, and I'm surprised when I do. But I don't think that anything that occurs in life should be omitted from art, though the artist should present it in a fashion that is artistic and not ugly. I set out to tell the truth. And sometimes the truth is shocking.
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
The Paris Review, fall 1981
There is absolutely everything in great fiction but a clear answer.
EUDORA WELTY
On Writing
The reason a writer writes a book is to forget a book and the reason a reader reads one is to remember it.
THOMAS WOLFE
The Autobiography of an American Novelist
One never knows enough about characters in real life to put them into novels. One gets started and then, suddenly, one can not remember what toothpaste they use; what are their views on interior decoration, and one is stuck utterly. No, major characters emerge; minor ones may be photographed.
GRAHAM GREENE
The Paris Review, autumn 1953
Madness is terrific I can assure you, and not to be sniffed at; and in its lava I still find most of the things I write about. It shoots out of one everything shaped, final, not in mere driblets, as sanity does.
VIRGINIA WOOLF
Letters
In the end, the writer is not even allowed to live in his writing.
THEODOR W. ADORNO
Minima Moralia
I've increasingly been interested in leaving gaps and unresolved elements within a novel, trying to escape from the model of the novel as something in which there is a secret that, when revealed, will make all clear. It seems to me too unlike life, too convenient, too fictional.
ALAN HOLLINGHURST
The Paris Review, winter 2011
I've got splinters in my nose from the best publishing doors in town.
RITA MAE BROWN
interview, Time, March 18, 2008
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
I think any start has to be a false start because really there's no way to start. You just have to force yourself to sit down and turn off the quality censor. And you have to keep the censor off, or you start second-guessing every other sentence. Sometimes the suspicion of a possible false start comes through, and you have to suppress it to keep writing. But it gets more persistent. And the moment you know it's really a false start is when you start ... it's hard to put into words.
ELIF BATUMAN
The Paris Review, winter 2012
I realized that I wanted to be a writer. But I wasn't sure I would be until I was fifteen or so. At that time I had immodestly started sending stories to magazines and literary quarterlies. Of course no writer ever forgets his first acceptance; but one fine day when I was seventeen, I had my first, second, and third, all in the same morning's mail. Oh, I'm here to tell you, dizzy with excitement is no mere phrase!
TRUMAN CAPOTE
The Paris Review, spring-summer 1957
I couldn't imagine, and I don't say this with any pride, but I really couldn't imagine writing without a desperate deadline.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON
The Paris Review, fall 2000
Everybody wants to feel that you're writing to a certain demographic because that's good business, but I've never done that ... I tried to write stories that would interest me. I'd say, what would I like to read?... I don't think you can do your best work if you're writing for somebody else, because you never know what that somebody else really thinks or wants.
STAN LEE
Brandweek, May 2000
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