Writers On Writing Quotes

Definition of a Writer: One who tells stories that demand to be told.

My language is the common prostitute that I turn into a virgin.

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

Predictions are uttered by prophets (free of charge); by clairvoyants (who usually charge a fee, and are therefore more honored in their day than prophets); and by futurologists (salaried). Prediction is the business of prophets, clairvoyants, and futurologists. It is not the business of novelists. A novelist's business is lying.

Ursula K Le Guin

Women’s fiction” doesn’t sound like anything but a slur to my ears.

Sheila Heti

You say grace before meals. I say grace before I dip the pen in the ink.

G.K. Chesterton

Writing isn't difficult. Writing well is difficult. What is most difficult is being with the interior experience that manifests as resistance to writing.

H. Raven Rose

There is a curious idea among unscientific men that in scientific writing there is a common plateau of perfectionism. Nothing could be more untrue. The reports of biologists are the measure, not of the science, but of the men themselves. There are as few scientific giants as any other kind. In some reports it is impossible, because of inept expression, to relate the descriptions to the living animals. In some papers collecting places are so mixed or ignored that the animals mentioned cannot be found at all. The same conditioning forces itself into specification as it does into any other kind of observation, and the same faults of carelessness will be found in scientific reports as in the witness chair of a criminal court. It has seemed sometimes that the little men in scientific work assumed the awe-fullness of a priesthood to hide their deficiencies, as the witch-doctor does with his stilts and high masks, as the priesthoods of all cults have, with secret or unfamiliar languages and symbols. It is usually found that only the little stuffy men object to what is called "popularization", by which they mean writing with a clarity understandable to one not familiar with the tricks and codes of the cult. We have not known a single great scientist who could not discourse freely and interestingly with a child. Can it be that the haters of clarity have nothing to say, have observed nothing, have no clear picture of even their own fields? A dull man seems to be a dull man no matter what his field, and of course it is the right of a dull scientist to protect himself with feathers and robes, emblems and degrees, as do other dull men who are potentates and grand imperial rulers of lodges of dull men.

John Steinbeck

Images are not quite ideas, they are stiller than that, with less implication outside themselves. And they are not myth, they do not have the explanatory power; they are nearer to pure story. Nor are they always metaphors; they do not say this is that, they say this is.

Robert Hass

Flora was in that state where the spirit may be willing but the flesh is weak and wishes to go on holiday - and where the flesh in most cases wins hands down with a packed suitcase. It did so now. So she did what many a researcher both great and insignificant does when they are stuck. She yawned while contemplating how to catch the Muse by surprising Her. Almost invariably, the Muse has seen it all before - and also yawns.

Mavis Cheek

A writer's work is never done, unless he or she has no readers.

K. Sean Harris

The design of a book is the pattern of a reality controlled and shaped by the mind of a writer.

John Steinbeck

But then all writers smoke, don't they? And drink? And sit in front of computer screens till their arteries clog and muscles atrophy?

T.C. Boyle

Writers are like actors too. For every story we create, we must get under the skin of the characters and role play with our writing.

Jyoti Arora

I consider whoever my words land on to be my target, that’s why I like flash fiction, it’s a lot like using a shotgun.

Neil Leckman

Me to characters: talk to me people.

Buffy Andrews

Good editors are priceless.

Buffy Andrews

If I write as well as I golf, I'm in trouble!

Buffy Andrews

Show me the contract.

Buffy Andrews

A tweet a day keeps writer's block away.

Buffy Andrews

A cliffhanger is when ...

Buffy Andrews

Climax: It's all downhill from here.

Buffy Andrews

Writer. Another word for poor.

Buffy Andrews

Write on!

Buffy Andrews

The power of the delete key.

Buffy Andrews

Maybe I write because I’ve learned to show certain parts of my heart on the page that I still struggle to capture in speech.

Common

Lie naked on the table, and let them cut. Criticism is surgery, and humility is the anesthetic that allows you to tolerate it. In the end, the process will make you a stronger, more flexible, and truly creative writer. It will replace attitude with genuine confidence, and empty arrogance with artistry.

Molly Cochran

To sit down so often with nothing to say,-to say something so often, almost without consciousness of saying and without any remembrance or having said,-is a power of which I will not violate my modesty by boasting; but I do not believe everyone has it.

Michael Kelahan

Writing is easy. Writing is hard. It's a breeze and a struggle, just like life.

Dennis R. Miller

Every writer on this planet THINKS he is a great writer (why waste your entire life writing when you believe you are mediocre?) but its deemed socially unacceptable to actually speak out such thoughts. So, modesty is always a public concept and not an inner one. For that reason alone 'modesty' can actually be said to be the product of a large ego, for the ego is primarily concerned with survival and society rewards this dishonesty and tends to punish honesty (see Camus)

Martijn Benders

It seemed to me then that to have published a book - any kind of book - would be the greatest possible happiness I could ask from life.

Christopher Isherwood

There is no moral to my song,I praise no right, I blame no wrong;I tell of things that I have seen,I show the man that I have beenAs simply as a poet canWho knows himself poet and man.

Thomas MacDonagh

Never take yourself too seriously. Learn to let go and let the words flow.

Caron Kamps Widden

Biographies are best when written chronologically. Boring people don't make for good biographies.

Deana J. Driver

If you really have talent, you know, you'll go on writing - whatever people say to you.

Christopher Isherwood

I admire the person who can write it right off. Mencken once said that a person who thinks clearly can write well. But I don't think clearly--too many thoughts bump into one another. Trains of thought run on a track of the Central Nervous System--the New York Central Nervous System, to make it worse.

James Thurber

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.

Christy Hall

Some of the best characters are the most flawed characters.

Brian A. McBride

Souls are more important than stories, yes. But stories are a window to the soul. Without stories, the soul suffocates.

Christy Hall

Tell it fast before you get scared and silence yourself. You’ll never wish you’d held back a little more.

Catherynne M. Valente

My mother, who is a pianist and a fine artist, purchased a piano for me. Twice. This was back when I was a small girl. Pianos, of course, came complete with the quintessential piano teacher who whacked my hand with a stick each time I struck the wrong key. I learned a few pieces, yes, but eventually my pen compelled me to write too much and the sound of the leaves rustling in the wind compelled me to climb trees too often. Sorry mom. Coincidentally, books come from trees and flipping the pages sounds like wind through leaves... hhhmmmm... I guess I’m still just climbing trees now, but in a different way!

C. JoyBell C.

There are times you wake up in the middle of the night, fingers hit the keyboard and you allow words to flow. That is a writer.

Jenn E.

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.

Lori Lesko

As a writer, I like the list of "things to strive for" that Richard Yates kept above his typewriter:genuine claritygenuine feelingthe right wordthe exact English sentencethe eloquent detailthe rigorous dramatization of story

Richard Yates

When I was a little boy, they called me a liar, but now that I'm a grown up, they call me a writer.

Isaac Bashevis Singer

I don’t do math.

Buffy Andrews

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

Buffy Andrews

Conflict. Conflict. Where art thou conflict?

Buffy Andrews

Rejection. Rejection. You can't handle rejection!

Buffy Andrews

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

Buffy Andrews

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

Buffy Andrews

Getting the first draft finished is like pushing a very dirty peanut across the floor with your nose.

Joyce Carol Oates

To become a WRITER I had to learn to INTERRUPT, to speak up, to speak a little louder, and then LOUDER, and then to just speak in my own voice which is NOT LOUD AT ALL.

Deborah Levy

I'm in love with writing, but sometimes I swear it hates me.

Buffy Andrews

Sometimes the writing just comes and we're like, oh yeah. Gotta love when that happens.

Buffy Andrews

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

Jebreel Nahaary

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.

Jebreel Nahaary

Make today the day you begin that awesome idea you have had for years. Now go, write this book, and remember that today is an important day in history.

M. Kirin

Writing is a little bit like prostitution. First you do it for love. Then you do it for a few friends. Then you do it for money.

Molière

It's amazing what you find out about yourself when you write in the first person about someone very different from you.

Doris Lessing

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Writers On Writing Quotes

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