Writing Quotes - Page 20

I want to write because I have the urge to excel in one medium of translation and expression of life. I can't be satisfied with the colossal job of merely living. Oh, no, I must order life in sonnets and sestinas and provide a verbal reflector for my 60-watt lighted head.

You are what you write.

Literature is strewn with the wreckage of those who have minded beyond reason the opinion of others.

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.

Art never responds to the wish to make it democratic; it is not for everybody; it is only for those who are willing to undergo the effort needed to understand it.

Write what disturbs you, what you fear, what you have not been willing to speak about. Be willing to be split open.

A book is a suicide postponed.

So okay― there you are in your room with the shade down and the door shut and the plug pulled out of the base of the telephone. You've blown up your TV and committed yourself to a thousand words a day, come hell or high water. Now comes the big question: What are you going to write about? And the equally big answer: Anything you damn well want.

A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit.

Don’t give people what they want, give them what they need.

You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you.

When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.

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.

The story is always better than your ability to write it.

So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say.

If you show someone something you've written, you give them a sharpened stake, lie down in your coffin, and say, ‘When you’re ready’.

Read a thousand books, and your words will flow like a river.

If the word doesn't exist, invent it; but first be sure it doesn't exist.

Writers are the exorcists of their own demons.

Writing is the only thing that when I do it, I don't feel I should be doing something else.