quotations about writing
I don't believe in the notion that some characters have lives of their own and the author follows after them. The author has to be careful not to force the character to do something that would go against the logic of that character's personality, but the character does not have independence. The character is trapped in the author's hand, in my hand, but he is trapped in a way he does not know he is trapped. The characters are on strings, but the strings are loose; the characters enjoy the illusion of freedom, of independence, but they cannot go where I do not want them to go. When that happens, the author must pull on the string and say to them, I am in charge here.
JOSÉ SARAMAGO
The Paris Review, winter 1998
Much modern prose is praised for its terseness, its scrupulous avoidance of curlicue, etcetera. But I don't feel the deeper rhythm there. I don't think these writers are being terse out of choice. I think they are being terse because it's the only way they can write.
MARTIN AMIS
The Paris Review, spring 1998
I like to have a hero a little underpowered. I mean, Spiderman is far cooler than Superman. How do you challenge Superman?
PATRICIA BRIGGS
interview, Bitten by Books, March 30, 2010
Writers kid themselves -- about themselves and other people. Take the talk about writing methods. Writing is just work -- there's no secret. If you dictate or use a pen or type or write with your toes -- it's still just work.
SINCLAIR LEWIS
attributed, Just Open a Vein: A Book of Quotes for Writers
The reason a writer writes a book is to forget a book and the reason a reader reads one is to remember it.
THOMAS WOLFE
The Autobiography of an American Novelist
Madness is terrific I can assure you, and not to be sniffed at; and in its lava I still find most of the things I write about. It shoots out of one everything shaped, final, not in mere driblets, as sanity does.
VIRGINIA WOOLF
Letters
I don't know where the characters are going to go or what's going to happen. I know that something inevitable will happen. I know that they want certain things and they're in a certain room and they smell like this and they look like that. More often than not, an entropy creeps in that strangles me, and then the inevitable happens. I don't know if I have the ability to write an ending like My Fair Lady's, when everyone gets what they want after a few minor conflicts. If I tried to write that it would just be false. Or I'd have someone enter with a machine gun.
ADAM RAPP
interview, Bomb Magazine, spring 2006
The responsibility of the writer is to be a sort of demonic social critic -- to present the world and people in it as he sees it and say, "Do you like it? If you don't like it, change it."
EDWARD ALBEE
interview with Digby Diehl, 1963
The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof, shit detector. This is the writer's radar and all great writers have had it.
ERNEST HEMINGWAY
Paris Review, spring 1958
Writing is a conversation, to me. The best kind. You can't get interrupted.
GERALD ASHER
speech at the Symposium for Professional Wine Writers, February 2011
Writing is an act of blind faith that out there, somewhere, someone will read and enjoy, understand.
JAMES V. SCHALL
"The Creative Catholic: Fr. James V. Schall S.J. on the art and vocation of writing", Catholic World Report, March 27, 2017
It's a principle of mine to come into the story as late as possible, and to tell it as fast as you can.
JOHN LE CARRÉ
interview, The Paris Review, summer 1997
Having your book turned into a movie is like seeing your oxen turned into bouillon cubes.
JOHN LE CARRÉ
attributed, Bad TV: The Very Best of the Very Worst
I've gotten a little superstitious about listening to music when I write. Once a story is going somewhere, I keep listening to the same music whenever I work on that story. It seems to help me keep in voice, and alternatively, if I need to make some kind of dramatic shift, I'll go and put on something different to shake myself awake.
KELLY LINK
"Words by Flashlight", Sybil's Garage, June 7, 2006
Any writer, in whatever form, must first pass through the stage of being a reader. It is unimaginable that someone could become a writer without first being a reader. Only a daydreamer who had fallen into an unhealthy idealism could exoticize a writer in this way. Such misperception is similar to believing that thought is possible without language.
KOBO ABE
The Frontier Within
Someone watches over us when we write. Mother. Teacher. Shakespeare. God.
MARTIN AMIS
London Fields
What I like to do is write the story, see where it takes me -- and then check out the details I don't know. When I first started writing, there were a lot of things about the world that I understood but didn't have the vocabulary for -- and even more things that I just had no idea about. For instance, do you know all the parts of a door frame? Or what flowers bloom in the spring in alpine climates? There's a surprising amount of homework involved in writing a book.
PATRICIA BRIGGS
interview, Bitten by Books, March 30, 2010
I turn sentences around. That's my life. I write a sentence and then I turn it around. Then I look at it and turn it around again.
PHILIP ROTH
Ghost Writer
A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul, and that, I am sure, is why he does it.
ROALD DAHL
Boy
There is, as yet, no Act of Parliament compelling a bona fide traveler to read. If you wish him to read, you must make reading pleasant. You must give him short views, and clear sentences.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies