WRITING QUOTES XXXIII

quotations about writing

You can only learn to be a better writer by actually writing. I don't know much about creative writing programs. But they're not telling the truth if they don't teach, one, that writing is hard work and, two, that you have to give up a great deal of life, your personal life, to be a writer.

DORIS LESSING

The New York Times, April 22, 1984


My method is to take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say, and then to say it with the utmost levity.

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

Answers to Nine Questions

Tags: George Bernard Shaw


If you are to become a writer you'll have to stop fooling with words.

SHERWOOD ANDERSON

"The Teacher", Winesburg, Ohio

Tags: Sherwood Anderson


Many writers-in-waiting spend a lot of time avoiding the work at hand. The most common way to avoid writing is by procrastination. This is the writer's greatest enemy. There is little to say about it except that once you decide to write every day, you must make yourself sit at the desk or table for the required period whether or not you are putting down words. Make yourself take the time even if the hours seem fruitless. Ideally, after a few days or weeks of being chained to the desk, you will submit to the story that must be told.

WALTER MOSLEY

This Year You Write Your Novel


I truly believe that writing is a continuum--so the different genres and forms are simply stops along the same continuum. Different ideas that need to be expressed sometimes require different forms for the ideas to float better.

CHRIS ABANI

interview, UTNE Reader, June 2010

Tags: Chris Abani


Sometimes I pick up a book and I say: Well, so you've written it first, have you? Good for you. O.K., then I won't have to write it.

DORIS LESSING

The Golden Notebook

Tags: Doris Lessing


A day in which I don't write leaves a taste of ashes.

SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR

attributed, Writers on Writing

Tags: Simone de Beauvoir


I'm never lonely when I'm writing, because you live with the characters that are so alive in your mind. And you really see them and know them and get to be friends with them.

JULIE ANDREWS

interview, American Libraries Magazine

Tags: Julie Andrews


I've discovered that rejections are not altogether a bad thing. They teach a writer to rely on his own judgment and to say in his heart of hearts, "To hell with you."

SAUL BELLOW

attributed, Putting Your Passion Into Print


To me the question is always this: if a ray of light came out of the sky and said, "Your next book will never be published -- would you still write it?" If the answer is yes, the book is worth writing.

MARKUS ZUSAK

"Why I Write", The Guardian, March 28, 2008


The great thing for me, now, is that writing has become more and more interesting. Not just as a craft but as a way into things that are not described. It's a thing of discovering. That's when writing is really working. You're on the trail of something and you don't quite know what it is.

SAM SHEPARD

The Observer, March 20, 2010


Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of--but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.

ROBERT A. HEINLEIN

The Notebooks of Lazarus Long

Tags: Robert A. Heinlein