Quotes on Writing

I believe one writes because one has to create a world in which one can live.

Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

The best effect of any book is that it excites the reader to self activity.

Stories may well be lies, but they are good lies that say true things, and which can sometimes pay the rent.

Writing, real writing, should leave a small sweet bruise somewhere on the writer . . . and on the reader.

To write history one must be more than a man, since the author who holds the pen of this great justiciary must be free from all preoccupation of interest or vanity.

After writing a story I was always empty and both sad and happy, as though I had made love.

A poet can write about a man slaying a dragon, but not about a man pushing a button that releases a bomb.

The only sensible ends of literature are, first, the pleasurable toil of writing; second, the gratification of one's family and friends; and lastly, the solid cash.

Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.

I began writing at the age of 5, but there was a dark period between the ages of 8 and 16 when I didn't write. I started again at 16. And have no idea why, but it was suddenly the only thing I wanted to do.

I think an artist, in my definition of that word, would not be someone who takes sides with the emperor against his powerless subjects. That's different from prescribing a way in which a writer should write.

I never exactly made a book. It's rather like taking dictation. I was given things to say.

All my best thoughts were stolen by the ancients.

Indeed, learning to write may be part of learning to read. For all I know, writing comes out of a superior devotion to reading.

Writers do not live one life, they live two. There is the living and then there is the writing. There is the second tasting, the delayed reaction.

Keep me up till five because all your stars are out, and for no other reason…Oh dare to do it Buddy! Trust your heart. You’re a deserving craftsman. It would never betray you. Good night. I’m feeling very much over-excited now, and a little dramatic, but I think I’d give almost anything on earth to see you writing a something, an anything, a poem, a tree, that was really and truly after your own heart.

She decides to make a list of the things that make her happy. She writes 'plum-blossom' at the top of a piece of paper. Then she stares at the paper, unable to think of anything else. Eventually it begins to get dark.

I am too fond of reading books to care to write them.

I feel that by writing I am doing what is far more necessary than anything else.

For it would seem - her case proved it - that we write, not with the fingers, but with the whole person. The nerve which controls the pen winds itself about every fibre of our being, threads the heart, pierces the liver.