Quotes on Writing

Just as a good rain clears the air, a good writing day clears the psyche.

At that moment, the urge to be writing was stronger than any notion she had of what she might write.

There is only one place to write and that is alone at a typewriter. The writer who has to go into the streets is a writer who does not know the streets. . . when you leave your typewriter you leave your machine gun and the rats come pouring through.

In order to write the book you want to write, in the end you have to become the person you need to become to write that book.

Literature is invention. Fiction is fiction. To call a story a true story is an insult to both art and truth.

How well I would write if I were not here!

Dead women tell no tales. Sad men write them down.

We human beings build houses because we're alive but we write books because we're mortal. We live in groups because we're sociable but we read because we know we're alone. Reading offers a kind of companionship that takes no one's place but that no one can replace either. It offers no definitive explanation of our destiny but links us inextricably to life. Its tiny secret links remind us of how paradoxically happy we are to be alive while illuminating how tragically absurd life is.

A writing may be lost; a lie may be written; but what the eye has seen is truth and remains in the mind!

Kids, fiction is the truth inside the lie, and the truth of this fiction is simple enough: the magic exists.

I don't think I'm essentially interested in children's books. I'm interested in writing, and in pictures. I'm interested in people and in children because they are people.

"What are you going to do?" "Can't say - run for president, write -" "Greenwich Village?" "Good heavens, no - I said write - not drink."

Writing is one of the most solitary activities in the world.

The pleasures of writing correspond exactly to the pleasures of reading

My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying.

I still have no way to survive but to keep writing one line, one more line, one more line.

Here's the truth you have to wrestle with: the reason that art (writing, engaging, leading, all of it) is valuable is precisely why I can't tell you how to do it. If there were a map, there'd be no art, because art is the act of navigating without a map. Don't you hate that? I love that there's no map.

Freedom begins the moment you realize someone else has been writing your story and it's time you took the pen from his hand and started writing it yourself.

I'm very much aware in the writing of dialogue, or even in the narrative too, of a rhythm. There has to be a rhythm with it … Interviewers have said, you like jazz, don’t you? Because we can hear it in your writing. And I thought that was a compliment.

Write me of hope and love, and hearts that endured.

I say I drownin' in river. She don't look me like I'm crazy but say, If you just sit there the river gonna rise up drown you! Writing could be the boat carry you to the other side. (97)