Quotes on Writing

Sometimes I think creativity is magic; it's not a matter of finding an idea, but allowing the idea to find you.

A life spent writing has taught me to be wary of words. Those that seem clearest are often the most treacherous.

There's always ways of motivating yourself to higher levels. Write about it, dream about it. But after that, turn it into action. Don't just dream.

You've got to sell your heart, your strongest reactions, not the little minor things that only touch you lightly, the little experiences that you might tell at dinner. This is especially true when you begin to write, when you have not yet developed the tricks of interesting people on paper, when you have none of the technique which it takes time to learn. When, in short, you have only your emotions to sell.

All I needed was a steady table and a typewriter...a marble-topped bedroom washstand table made a good place; the dining-room table between meals was also suitable.

I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in.

When I write a scientific treatise, I might reach 100 people. When the 'National Geographic' covers a project, it communicates about plants and fish and underwater technology to more than 10 million people.

There's nothing illogical, it seems to me, about saying, 'I am going to care deeply about my work and my writing. I'm also going to care deeply about my family and my child.'

Respect is one of the greatest expressions of love. If other people try to write your story, it means they don't respect you. They consider that you're not a good artist who can write your own story, even though you were born to write your own story.

A wise man should so write (though in words understood by all men) that wise men only should be able to commend him.

Write because you love the art and the discipline, not because you're looking to sell something.

A writer - and, I believe, generally all persons - must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art.

If to live is to progress, if you are lucky, from foolishness to wisdom, then to write novels is to broadcast the various stages of your foolishness.

When you write a song, a song has longevity

To create a market for your writing you have to be consistent, professional, a continuing writer - not just a one-article or a one-story or a one-book man.

I thought, if ever there were a time to write a book about hope, it's now.

And the nice thing about writing a novel is you take your time, you sit with the character sometimes nine years, you look very deeply at a situation, unlike in real life when we just kind of snap something out.

Authors were shy, unsociable creatures, atoning for their lack of social aptitude by inventing their own companions and conversations.

I also started writing songs because I had this burning activity in my heart and had to express myself.

But if a stranger in the train asks me my occupation, I never answer "writer" for fear that he may go on to ask me what I write, and to answer "poetry" would embarrass us both, for we both know that nobody can earn a living simply by writing poetry.

The important thing in writing is the capacity to astonish. Not shock - shock is a worn-out word - but astonish.