Best 30386 quotes in «writing quotes» category

I didn't know that would be the last time I'd see him, his neck scar lit blue by the diner's neon marquee. To see that little comma again, to put my mouth there, let my shadow widen the scar until, at last, there was no scar to be seen at all, just a vast and equal dark sealed by my lips. A comma superimposed by a period the mouth so naturally makes. Isn't that the saddest thing in the world, Ma? A comma forced to be a period?

I didn't plan on either children or writing. Once I realized that writing satisfied me in some enormous way, I had to make adjustments. The writing was always marginal in terms of time when the children were small. But it was major in terms of my head. I always thought that women could do a lot of things. All the women I knew did nine or ten things at one time. I always understood that women worked, they went to church, they managed their houses, they managed somebody else's houses, they raised their children, they raised somebody else's children, they taught. I wouldn't say it's not hard, but why wouldn't it be? All important things are hard.

I didn't want to be the woman who gave herself over willingly to the first man to notice her. I didn't want to be the stupid girl in every novel who loved without question and entered relationships that didn't make sense.

I die a little everyday, in trying to revive what I lost yesterday!

I didn't think about anything, and yet I thought about everything. It was a special kind of thinking, the sort I'd always done when I was getting close to writing a book

I didn’t need to be a writer to know that I could. Did you have to become a penis to act like a dick?

I didn't want to sing. I wanted to be music.

I die with the dying light, yet shine brighter as the darkness approaches. Soon I’ll be whittled to bone and stripped clean through, nothing left but a skeleton on which to hang a hat. But have no fear, I look good in hats.

I'd like to be a handsome corpse. At my funeral, I'd like people to look in my coffin and say, "Wow. He's so handsome when he's dead!" I guess it'd be kind of okay, too, if they made my books required reading in schools or something, but as far as leaving a legacy goes, I just want to be the hottest cadaver in the graveyard.

I do feel that literature should be demystified. What I object to is what is happening in our era: literature is only something you get at school as an assignment. No one reads for fun, or to be subversive or to get turned on to something. It's just like doing math at school. I mean, how often do we sit down and do trigonometry for fun, to relax. I've thought about this, the domination of the literary arts by theory over the past 25 years -- which I detest -- and it's as if you have to be a critic to mediate between the author and the reader and that's utter crap. Literature can be great in all ways, but it's just entertainment like rock'n'roll or a film. It is entertainment. If it doesn't capture you on that level, as entertainment, movement of plot, then it doesn't work. Nothing else will come out of it. The beauty of the language, the characterisation, the structure, all that's irrelevant if you're not getting the reader on that level -- moving a story. If that's friendly to readers, I cop to it.

I'd like to be a handsome corpse. At my funeral, I'd like people to look in my coffin and say, "Wow. He's so handsome when he's dead!" I guess it'd be kind of okay, too, if they made my books required reading in schools or something, but mostly, I just want to be the hottest cadaver in the graveyard.

I do a lot of rewriting. It’s very painful.

I'd never be where I am if more successful writers hadn't taken an interest in me and done me a good turn.

I do not have any trust fund, I have always trusted God for all my funds.

I do not often reveal weakness in my writing. I tell stories in magnificent terms; I am, as a person, the ultimate case study in hyperbole. I tell stories borne from passion or anger or righteous conviction, I want to incite a revolution in your heart; I tell stories that are godly and Grand, I am the Great Gatsby of impressive tropes and fiery forging chaos strummed into smooth endings with an adjective; I am a teller of magnificent fables; I am a glutton of adjectival delicacy, I construct empires in paragraphs where villages are more appropriate; you ask me for an apple, I give you ten, then if you hesitate to speak, I will give you six more.

I do not admire Flaubert, yet when I am told that by his own admission all he hoped to accomplish in in Salammbo was to 'give the impression of the color yellow' and in Madame Bovary 'to do something that would have the color of those mouldy cornices that harbor wood lice' and that he cared for nothing else, such generally extra-literary preoccupations leave me anything but indifferent.

I do not steal imagination. I use it and replace it by making people read.

I do not recommend writing a screenplay in two weeks.

I do not so much write a book as sit up with it, as with a dying friend. During visiting hours, I enter its room with dread and sympathy for its many disorders. I hold its hand and hope it will get better. This tender relationship can change in a twinkling. If you skip a visit or two, a work in progress will turn on you.

I do not write poetry; I take words and dip them in feelings.

I don't believe there's ever been a 'good' first draft, but there's a reason for that: they don’t have to be. First drafts are part of the process; they're the rough diamond on their way to being cut and polished. It takes a while to get them to shine.

I do not write to escape the world, but to untangle and understand it. from Lady Jayne Disappears by Joanna Davidson Politano

I do not wish to comment on the work; if it does not speak for itself, it is a failure.

I don't believe in writer's block. Who can function working seven days a week at at job. It's the same with writing. Take a break and let the words come to you. It rarely comes if you force it and if it does, you'll probably regret what you wrote down on paper.

I don't Dream; I create fantastical stories.

I don’t experience writer’s block, I only have periods of severe writer’s diarrhoea; an incoherent mess of unfitting words placed in random sentences. Luckily, I can usually separate the shit from “the shit” later on.

I don't dream; I create fantastical words.

I don't claim to know everything, Wally. I only claim that everything can eventually be known.

I don’t exist metal pressed to pages spilling blood, ink in vein each thought rages Sunlight shooting through a forest of pines black top winding and yellow dotted lines I am not here only a deep aching, a lightning flash and a tree trunk breaking Sheets once alive covered in a deep red mark the present but I am not yet dead Nothing is here only the rain and mist fresh air and soil I do not need to exist.

I don't have problems. I am a writer. I am the problem.

I don’t intend to let myself become the kind of author who can only work in seclusion – after all, Jane Austen wrote in the sitting-room and merely covered up her work when a visitor called (though I bet she thought a thing or two) – but I am not quite Jane Austen yet and there are limits to what I can stand.

I don't keep a journal. I'm not that interested in myself.

I don't know anything in the beginning, which makes it great fun to write, you know? You don't know anything. You don't even know how to write. So you begin every book as an amateur and as a dummy. And in the writing, you discover the book. Of course, you're in charge. But gradually by writing sentence after sentence, the book, as it were, reveals itself through you to your language - through your language, rather. So each sentence is a revelation. I'm not exaggerating. Each and every sentence is a revelation. And what you're trying to do is hook one sentence to the sentence before and the next one to that sentence. And as you do, you're building a house, you know? [But] the architect and the contractor, they know what the house will look like when it's done. And that's the big difference. I don't have any idea what it will look like when it's done.

I don’t know any writers who don’t drink.

I don't imagine book elitists as my audience when writing. I dream about teachers, morticians and garbage men instead.

I don't invent my characters. I steal them from my surroundings. To be a writer is to be a life thief. Every day, I rob myself blind.

I don't just have only the peace of God, I do also have a God who gives peace, not just resources but the revelation of His presence.

I don't know who a character is till I look into their eyes.

I don't like books which give me the answers. I love books that give me the questions

I don't know what I was hoping for. Some small praise, I guess. A bit of encouragement. I didn't get it. Miss Parrish took me aside one day after school let out. She said she'd read my stories and found them morbid and dispiriting. She said literature was meant to uplift the heart and that a young woman such as myself ought to turn her mind to topics more cheerful and inspiring than lonely hermits and dead children. "Look around yourself, Mathilda," she said. "At the magnificence of nature. It should inspire joy and awe. Reverence. Respect. Beautiful thoughts and fine words." I had looked around. I'd seen all the things she'd spoken of and more besides. I'd seen a bear cub lift it's face to the drenching spring rains. And the sliver moon of winter, so high and blinding. I'd seen the crimson glory of a stand of sugar maples in autumn and the unspeakable stillness of a mountain lake at dawn. I'd seen them and loved them. But I'd also seen the dark of things. The starved carcasses of winter deer. The driving fury of a blizzard wind. And the gloom that broods under the pines always. Even on the brightest days.

I don’t know whether Asimov realized he was saying this as well, but as an old historical materialist, if only as an afterthought, he must have realized that he was saying too: No one here will ever look at you, read a word you write, or consider you in any situation, no matter whether the roof is falling in or the money is pouring in, without saying to him- or herself (whether in an attempt to count it or to discount it), 'Negro...' The racial situation, permeable as it might sometimes seem (and it is, yes, highly permeable), is nevertheless your total surround. Don’t you ever forget it...! And I never have.

I don't know whether it was Bukowski who said "Find what you love and let it kill you." I have found what I love. I love writing. And I am letting it kill me!

I dont know why, but I feel some pain when she knew I was writing a lot of writing for her and when she suddenly wrote one, it's not for me. You can't go on with the situation like that, it could have kill you at the exact moment.

I don’t need to write. Madness or suicide are other options, though not nearly as compelling. But I want to create; I hope to create worlds in my own image, admittedly a self-centered plan. I want others to understand me better, pay more attention to me, like or love me for who I am. Maybe that’s it. Or maybe I should simply learn to say, “Let’s have lunch.

I don’t mind writing philosophical thoughts. If I don’t want to die like one.

I don't make the rules, I just make it up.

I don't profess any religion; I don't think it’s possible that there is a God; I have the greatest difficulty in understanding what is meant by the words ‘spiritual’ or ‘spirituality.' [Interview, The New Yorker, Dec. 26, 2005]

I don’t so much hope that any reader “agrees” with me, as I hope to haunt them, to trouble their sense of how things actually are.

I don't think all writers are sad, she said. I think it's the other way around— all sad people write.

I don’t want to be remembered for my work. I want to be remembered for my love.