Quotes on Writing

I have yet to see a piece of writing, political or non-political, that does not have a slant. All writing slants the way a writer leans, and no man is born perpendicular.

Learning to write is learning to think. You don't know anything clearly unless you can state it in writing.

The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it

What lasts in the reader's mind is not the phrase but the effect the phrase created: laughter, tears, pain, joy. If the phrase is not affecting the reader, what's it doing there? Make it do its job or cut it without mercy or remorse.

Writing should ... be as spontaneous and urgent as a letter to a lover, or a message to a friend who has just lost a parent ... and writing is, in the end, that oddest of anomalies: an intimate letter to a stranger

Writing talent is similar to the art of chatting up a girl. You can improve to a certain degree through practice, but basically you are either born with it or you aren't.

Being a writer means taking the leap from listening to saying 'Listen to me'.

I don't write for catharsis; I have to write to understand.

Suit the action to the word, the word to the action.

You cannot write for children They're much too complicated. You can only write books that are of interest to them.

The marvellous thing about writing, whether it be fiction or journalism, is that it is simultaneously the most intimate and the most anonymous of meetings between people. It is profoundly intimate in reaching into the psyche of another, at the same time as being devoid of social characteristics, cultural characteristics, economic characteristics.

People write because it seems like it'll be an easier job than carpet laying, that they might meet more girls. And they write because the world strikes them as being a marvelous place, and they want to keep bringing that to everybody's attention. You know ~ a scary place, a menacing place, an exciting place because it's scary and menacing. But mainly, kind of glorious.

I write for fanboy moments. I write to give myself strength. I write to be the characters that I am not. I write to explore all the things I'm afraid of. I write to do all the things the viewers want too. So the intensity of the fan response is enormously gratifying. It means I hit a nerve.

Write the unpublishable.. .and then publish it.

Get your passion on the paper. Detach from the outcome. Forget about whether it's going to get published.

God thought and things came to be, in-formed: the divine thought is the complicated womb of all that is. For it's not likely that, like some painter, He conjured up an image from a similar image, having seen beforehand things which His own one mind did not write.

In writing, habit seems to be a much stronger force than either willpower or inspiration.

I am writing to a rhythm and not to a plot.

If you love writing or making music or blogging or any sort of performing art, then do it. Do it with everything you've got. Just don't plan on using it as a shortcut to making a living.

When you write, you want to get rid of the world, don’t you? Of course you do. When you’re writing, you’re creating your own worlds.

Writing as writing. Writing as rioting. Writing as righting. _x000D_ On the best days, all three.