Quotes on Writing

Writing nonfiction is more like sculpture, a matter of shaping the research into the finished thing.

The real importance of reading is that it creates an ease & intimacy with the process of writing... It also offers you a constantly growing knowledge of what has been done and what hasn't, what is trite and what is fresh, what works and what lies there dying (or dead) on the page. The more you read, the less apt you are to make a fool of yourself with your pen or word processor.

When one wants to write, one writes. If one is condemned to write, one writes.

The most important thing in writing is to have written. I can always fix a bad page. I can't fix a blank one.

You only learn to be a better writer by actually writing.

We write from aspiration and antagonism, as well as from experience. We paint those qualities which we do not posses.

I started writing because I had a need inside of me to create something that was not there

This is what I love about novels - both reading them and writing them. They jump into the abyss to be with you where you are.

By writing at the instant, the very heartbeat of life is caught.

Good writing isn’t a science. It’s an art, and the horizon is infinite. You can always get better.

You say to yourself, Well, this poem isn't going to be any good, but I'll write it anyway.

If there is a magic in story writing, and I am convinced there is, no one has ever been able to reduce it to a recipe that can be passed from one person to another.

Writing a poem is like having an affair, a one-night stand; a short story is a romance, a relationship; a novel is a marriage-one has to be cunning, devise compromises, and make sacrifices.

It's just like sex; when [a book is] finished, it's finished.

So many writers come to class with one question dominant in their mind, 'How do I make a living from this?' It's a fair enough question and one I always try to answer well- but it saddens me that it so often overshadows the more relevant questions of 'why am I writing' and 'what am I saying' and 'how do I keep it honest.

What do you really want? Sit down and write it out on a piece of paper. Write it in the present tense.

I'd probably be a super wealthy guy if I had sat around writing songs and getting them placed like everyone else I know. But I write songs about people or after I meet them and they're somewhat biographical - they're fiction but also non-fiction.

If I could express the same thing with words as with music, I would, of course, use a verbal expression. Music is something autonomous and much richer. Music begins where the possibilities of language end. That is why I write music.

I go in for what is known in the trade as 'light writing' and those who do that - humorists they are sometimes called - are looked down upon by the intelligentsia and sneered at.

I'm not an extraordinary worker, I'm an extraordinary daydreamer. I exceed all my fantasies-even that of writing.

If you want to be a writer, write. Write and write and write. If you stop, start again. Save everything that you write. If you feel blocked, write through it until you feel your creative juices flowing again. Write. Writing is what makes a writer, nothing more and nothing less.