writing

writing

The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.
The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.
There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.
You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.
There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.
A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.
If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.
What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though. The Catcher in the Rye
We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.
Fantasy is hardly an escape from reality. It's a way of understanding it.
There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.
No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.
After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.
History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.
Lock up your libraries if you like, but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind. A Room Of One's Own
You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you. Zen in the Art of Writing
Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly -- they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced. Brave New World
Fiction is the truth inside the lie.
The road to hell is paved with adverbs. On Writing
We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.
Read, read, read. Read everything -- trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it. Then write. If it's good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out of the window.
Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college. A Man Without a Country
The first draft of anything is shit.
Writing is like sex. First you do it for love, then you do it for your friends, and then you do it for money.
If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.
You can make anything by writing.
If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster.
You must write every single day of your life... 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... may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.
Write drunk; edit sober.
A short story is a different thing all together - a short story is like a kiss in the dark from a stranger. Skeleton Crew
I haven't any right to criticize books, and I don't do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can't conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.
Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depth of your heart; confess to yourself you would have to die if you were forbidden to write.
All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.
The reason that fiction is more interesting than any other form of literature, to those who really like to study people, is that in fiction the author can really tell the truth without humiliating himself.
The role of a writer is not to say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say.
The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.
There are books full of great writing that don't have very good stories. Read sometimes for the story... don't be like the book-snobs who won't do that. Read sometimes for the words--the language. Don't be like the play-it-safers who won't do that. But when you find a book that has both a good story and good words, treasure that book.
Stories may well be lies, but they are good lies that say true things, and which can sometimes pay the rent.
Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.
The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.
A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people. Essays of Three Decades
For it would seem - her case proved it - that we write, not with the fingers, but with the whole person. The nerve which controls the pen winds itself about every fibre of our being, threads the heart, pierces the liver. Orlando: A Biography
I write differently from what I speak, I speak differently from what I think, I think differently from the way I ought to think, and so it all proceeds into deepest darkness.
Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s. On Writing
A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends.
A little talent is a good thing to have if you want to be a writer. But the only real requirement is the ability to remember every scar.
Writing is a way of talking without being interrupted.
Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?
Easy reading is damn hard writing.
The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.
Writing isn't about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end, it's about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well. It's about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Getting happy. On Writing
To be a poet is a condition, not a profession.
I hate writing, I love having written.
Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.
As a writer, you should not judge, you should understand.
Tears are words that need to be written.
My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.
Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open. On Writing
Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.
Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.
All I need is a sheet of paper and something to write with, and then I can turn the world upside down.
In many cases when a reader puts a story aside because it 'got boring,' the boredom arose because the writer grew enchanted with his powers of description and lost sight of his priority, which is to keep the ball rolling. On Writing
My books are water; those of the great geniuses is wine. Everybody drinks water. Notebook
The hard part about writing a novel is finishing it.
When asked, "How do you write?" I invariably answer, "One word at a time," and the answer is invariably dismissed. But that is all it is. It sounds too simple to be true, but consider the Great Wall of China, if you will: one stone at a time, man. That's all. One stone at a time. But I've read you can see that motherfucker from space without a telescope.
A woman knows very well that, though a wit sends her his poems, praises her judgment, solicits her criticism, and drinks her tea, this by no means signifies that he respects her opinions, admires her understanding, or will refuse, though the rapier is denied him, to run through the body with his pen. Orlando
<em>Le secret d'ennuyer est celui de tout dire.</em> (The secret of being a bore is to tell everything.)" (<em>Sept Discours en Vers sur l'Homme</em>, 1738)
In old days books were written by men of letters and read by the public. Nowadays books are written by the public and read by nobody.
I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in. Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson
The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shockproof, shit detector.
I write for the same reason I breathe ... because if I didn't, I would die.
Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work. On Writing
In order to write about life first you must live it.
It is the tale, not he who tells it.
How do I know what I think until I see what I say?
It's none of their business that you have to learn how to write. Let them think you were born that way.
After writing a story I was always empty and both sad and happy, as though I had made love.
Give me just enough information so that I can lie convincingly.
A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity.
The best stories don't come from "good vs. bad" but "good vs. good."
History is a set of lies agreed upon.
In writing, you must kill all your darlings.
Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.
Don't say the old lady screamed. Bring her on and let her scream.
There is creative reading as well as creative writing.
if you expect to succeed as a writer, rudeness should be the second-to-least of your concerns. The least of all should be polite society and what it expects. If you intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days as a member of polite society are numbered, anyway. On Writing
The best time for planning a book is while you're doing the dishes.
All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town.
I'm sorry I wrote you such a long letter; I didn't have time to write a short one.
I'd like to have money. And I'd like to be a good writer. These two can come together, and I hope they will, but if that's too adorable, I'd rather have money.
You must keep sending work out; you must never let a manuscript do nothing but eat its head off in a drawer. You send that work out again and again, while you're working on another one. If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success - but only if you persist.
I can shake off everything as I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn.
Write without pay until somebody offers to pay.
There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it's like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.
When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.
Writing is the only profession where no one considers you ridiculous if you earn no money.
A successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it.
Writing is the only thing that when I do it, I don't feel I should be doing something else.
Do you suffer when you write? I don't at all. Suffer like a bastard when don't write, or just before, and feel empty and fucked out afterwards. But never feel as good as while writing.
A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit.
You rely too much on brain. The brain is the most overrated organ.
A writer - and, I believe, generally all persons - must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art.
A writer must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid.
Write what you know. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer/Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.
I need solitude for my writing; not 'like a hermit' - that wouldn't be enough - but like a dead man.
Writing is a dog&rsquo;s life, but the only one worth living.
What cannot be said above all must not be silenced but written.
It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book.
We photograph things in order to drive them out of our minds. My stories are a way of shutting my eyes.
We are all pencils in the hand of God.
Books aren't written - they're rewritten. Including your own. It is one of the hardest things to accept, especially after the seventh rewrite hasn't quite done it.
To be an artist means never to avert one's eyes.
Writing is like sausage making in my view; you'll all be happier in the end if you just eat the final product without knowing what's gone into it.
The desire to write grows with writing.
The best way to become acquainted with a subject is to write about it.
A writer only begins a book. A reader finishes it. Works of Samuel Johnson
An author in his book must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere.
Just as anyone who listens to the muse will hear, you can write out of your own intention or out of inspiration. There is such a thing. It comes up and talks. And those who have heard deeply the rhythms and hymns of the gods, can recite those hymns in such a way that the gods will be attracted. The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life &amp; Work
I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read. Johnsonian Miscellanies - Vol II
Writing is the geometry of the soul.
A novel rough draft is like bread dough; you need to beat the crap out of it for it to rise. No Plot? No Problem!: A Low-Stress, High-Velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days
I would rather be attacked than unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an author is to be silent as to his works.
Writers are really people who write books not because they are poor, but because they are dissatisfied with the books which they could buy but do not like. Illuminations: Essays and Reflections
You are either born a writer or you are not.