quotations about writing
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
A writer is a reader moved to emulation.
SAUL BELLOW
attributed, The Hidden Writer
Write as the wind blows and command all words like an army!
HILAIRE BELLOC
The Path to Rome
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
Novels are like paintings, specifically watercolors. Every stroke you put down you have to go with. Of course you can rewrite, but the original strokes are still there in the texture of the thing.
JOAN DIDION
The Paris Review, spring 2006
Novelists have, on the average, about the same IQs as the cosmetic consultants at Bloomingdale's department store. Our power is patience. We have discovered that writing allows even a stupid person to seem halfway intelligent, if only that person will write the same thought over and over again, improving it just a little bit each time. It is a lot like inflating a blimp with a bicycle pump. Anybody can do it. All it takes is time.
KURT VONNEGUT
attributed, Quit Your Day Job!
I tend to write things seven times before I show them to my editor. I write them seven times, then I take them on tour, read them like a dozen times on tour, then go back to the room and rewrite, read and rewrite, and I try to learn as much as I can on my own before I show it to my editor at The New Yorker. I would never show him a first draft, because then he's really going to be sick of it by the twelfth draft.
DAVID SEDARIS
Oasis Magazine, June 2008
Write books only if you are going to say in them the things you would never dare confide to anyone.
EMIL CIORAN
The Trouble with Being Born
After all, the original way of writing books may turn out to be the best. The first author, it is plain, could not have taken anything from books, since there were no books for him to copy from; he looked at things for himself.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
Writers, like teeth, are divided into incisors and grinders.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Estimates of Some Englishmen and Scotchmen
Composition is a process of combination, in which thought puts together complementary truths, and talent fuses into harmony the most contrary qualities of style. So that there is no composition without effort, without pain even, as in all bringing forth. The reward is the giving birth to something living--something, that is to say, which, by a kind of magic, makes a living unity out of such opposed attributes as orderliness and spontaneity, thought and imagination, solidity and charm.
HENRI-FREDERIC AMIEL
Journal Intime
Read heavily in the area where you want to write. Be aware of what's selling and what's doing well but don't try to write to market trends; they are fleeting.
JEFF ABBOTT
interview, Book Browse
Writers don't give prescriptions. They give headaches!
CHINUA ACHEBE
Anthills of the Savannah
He who will not listen to any advice, nor be corrected in his writings, is a rank pedant.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Works of the Mind", Les Caractères
Great novelists are philosopher-novelists who write in images instead of arguments.
ALBERT CAMUS
The Myth of Sisyphus
Young writers if they are to mature require a period of between three and seven years in which to live down their promise. Promise is like the mediaeval hangman who after settling the noose, pushed his victim off the platform and jumped on his back, his weight acting a drop while his jockeying arms prevented the unfortunate from loosening the rope. When he judged him dead he dropped to the ground.
CYRIL CONNOLLY
Enemies of Promise
You might get the impression that I have a mild contempt for storytelling, which is only somewhat true. For example, I really like Agatha Christie. She obeys the rules of the genre at first, but then occasionally she manages to do very personal things. In my case, I think I start from the opposite point. At first, I don't obey, I don't plot, but then from time to time, I say to myself, Come on, there's got to be a story. I control myself. But I will never give up a beautiful fragment merely because it doesn't fit in the story.
MICHEL HOUELLEBECQ
The Paris Review, fall 2010
When anything important has to be written ... I think your hand concentrates for you.
REBECCA WEST
The Paris Review, spring 1981
Too much is written by the men who can't write about the men who do write.
JACK LONDON
Martin Eden
Every writer is an iron-monger that melts down old junk into new steel.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought