Quotes on Writers

My teacher Tom Spanbauer, the man who got me started writing in his workshop, used to say: 'Writers write because they weren't invited to a party.' That always struck so true, and people always nod their heads when they hear that. Especially writers.

I'm not asking for there to be all black writer's rooms or all Asian writer's rooms, or all white - I want them all to be diverse. When it's diverse, you're going to have a completely different dynamic. Everybody feels othered. Nobody feels like they've got the upper hand.

Americans think African writers will write about the exotic, about wildlife, poverty, maybe AIDS. They come to Africa and African books with certain expectations.

I always individuate myself from other writers who say they would die if they couldn't write. For me, I'd die if I couldn't read.

I was able to work out all sorts of attitudes to style and event and character, all of which affected the way I came to think about my own writing. I believe that all good writers are original.

It infuriates me that the work of white American writers can be universal and lay claim to classic texts, while black and female authors are ghetto-ized as 'other.'

Writing has certainly helped me explore about 20,000 versions of my authentic self. I suppose that's what most writers discover if they write long enough: there are a lot of selves roaming around in there.

Writers collect stories of rituals: John Cheever putting on a jacket and tie to go down to the basement, where he kept a desk near the boiler room. Keats buttoning up his clean white shirt to write in, after work.

Writing is, of course, a solitary occupation. But for many writers, myself included, it's through writing that we make certain vital connections.

They're fancy talkers about themselves, writers. If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don't listen to writers talking about writing or themselves.

It's becoming clearer and clearer to me that the world is there to be celebrated by writers, and in fact this is what all the good ones do, and that the great fashion for gloom and grimness was in fact a false path that certain writers took, I think in response to the horrors of the first half of the twentieth century.

Ninety-five percent of all writers who write do not get published, but 100 percent of all writers write because they have a voice in their head. The vast majority of writers simply write because they have to.

Writers don't always know what they mean - that's why they write. Their work stands in for them. On the page, the reader meets the authoritative, perfected self; in life, the writer is lumbered with the uncertain, imperfect one.

My best advice for writers is: Have your adventures, make your mistakes, and choose your friends poorly - all these make for great stories.

France is not poetic; she even feels, in fact, a congenital horror of poetry. Among the writers who use verse, those whom she will always prefer are the most prosaic.

Writers are in control of editing processes - making a sentence better, cutting out a paragraph. But the initial outpouring has very little to do with conscious control or manipulation.

A writer's job is to give the reader a larger vision of the world.

I do not think writers ought ever to sit down and think they must write about some cause, or theme, or something. If they write about their own experiences, something true is going to emerge.

It's nice to have writers write nice things about you and guys on radio and TV say nice things about you, but the guy who's in the locker next to you is the one you play the game for.

I am suspicious of writers who go looking for issues to address. Writers are neither preachers nor journalists. Journalists know much more than most writers about what's going on in the world. And if you want to change things, you do journalism.

Writing is not a matter of choice. Writers have to write. It is somehow in their temperament, in the blood, in tradition.