Quotes on Writing

We're professional worriers. You're constantly imagining things that could go wrong and then writing about them.

Experience of life (not of books) is the only capital usable in such a book as you have attempted; one can make no judicious use of this capital while it is new.

The best fantasy is written in the language of dreams. It is alive as dreams are alive, more real than real, for a moment at least, that long magic moment before we wake.

It is personalities not principles that move the age.

One writes such a story [The Lord of the Rings] not out of the leaves of trees still to be observed, nor by means of botany and soil-science; but it grows like a seed in the dark out of the leaf-mold of the mind: out of all that has been seen or thought or read, that has long ago been forgotten, descending into the deeps. No doubt there is much personal selection, as with a gardener: what one throws on one's personal compost-heap; and my mold is evidently made largely of linguistic matter.

My work...is to shatter the faith of men here, there, and everywhere, faith in affirmation, faith in negation, and faith in abstention from faith, and this for the sake of faith in faith itself.

An essential element for good writing is a good ear: One must listen to the sound of one's own prose.

The road to ignorance is paved with good editors.

No fathers or mothers think their own children ugly; and this self-deceit is yet stronger with respect to the offspring of the mind.

Prune what is turgid, elevate what is commonplace, arrange what is disorderly, introduce rhythm where the language is harsh, modify where it is too absolute.

Abuse is often of service. There is nothing so dangerous to an author as silence.

...it will not always happen that the success of a poet is proportionate to his labor.

A novel must give a sense of permanence as well as a sense of life.

The virtue of books is to be readable.

If you look at anything long enough, say just that wall in front of you - it will come out of that wall.

There was no really good true war book during the entire four years of the war. The only true writing that came through during the war was in poetry. One reason for this is that poets are not arrested as quickly as prose writers.

People should practice an art in order to make their souls grow and not to make money or become famous. Paint a picture. Write.

Our writing equipment takes part in forming our thoughts.

We cannot write well or truly but what we write with gusto.

There are no dull subjects. There are only dull writers.

Being a real writer means being able to do the work on a bad day.