Sad things can happen when an author chooses the wrong subject. First the author suffers, then the reader, and finally the publisher, all together in a tiny whirlpool of pain. –Wilfrid Sheed
The enemy of clear language is insincerity. –George Orwell
Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. For all one knows, that demon is simply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention. –George Orwell
You’re entitled to steal anything you are strong enough to carry out. –Saul Bellow
Immature artists borrow, while mature artists steal. –T. S. Eliot, also Lionel Trilling
If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the ‘Ode to a Grecian Urn’ is worth any number of old ladies. –William Faulkner
A writer is someone who spends years patiently trying to discover the second being inside him, and the world that makes him who he is. When I speak of writing, the image that comes first to my mind is not a novel, a poem, or a literary tradition; it is the person who shuts himself up in a room, sits down at a table, and, alone, turns inward. Amid his shadows, he builds a new world with words. This man—or this woman—may use a typewriter, or profit from the ease of a computer, or write with a pen on paper, as I do. As he writes, he may drink tea or coffee, or smoke cigarettes. From time to time, he may rise from his table to look out the window at the children playing in the street, or, if he is lucky, at trees and a view, or even at a black wall. He may write poems, or plays, or novels, as I do. But all these differences arise only after the crucial task is complete—after he has sat down at the table and patiently turned inward. To write is to transform that inward gaze into words, to study the worlds into which we pass when we retire into ourselves, and to do so with patience, obstinacy, and joy. –Orhan Pamuk, the Nobel Lecture, 2006
The writer’s secret is not inspiration—for it is never clear where that comes from—but stubbornness, endurance. The lovely Turkish expression ”to dig a well with a needle” seems to me to have been invented with writers in mind. … If a writer is to tell his own story—to tell it slowly, and as if it were a story about other people—if he is to feel the power of the story rise up inside him, if he is to sit down at a table and give himself over to this art, this craft, he must first be given some hope. The angel of inspiration (who pays regular visits to some and rarely calls on others) favors the hopeful and the confident, and it is when a writer feels most lonely, when he feels most doubtful about his efforts, his dreams, and the value of his writing, when he thinks that his story is only his story—it is at such moments that the angel chooses to reveal to him the images that will draw out the world he wishes to build. -- Orhan Pamuk, the Nobel Lecture, 2006
I would like to see myself as belonging to the traditions of writers who—wherever they are in the world, East or West—cut themselves off from society and shut themselves up in their rooms with their books; this is the starting point of true literature. … The writer who shuts himself up in a room and goes on a journey inside himself will, over the years, discover literature’s eternal rule: he must have the artistry to tell his own stories as if they were other people’s stories, and to tell other people’s stories as if they were his own, for that is what literature is. -- Orhan Pamuk, the Nobel Lecture, 2006
A writer talks of things that we all know but do not know that we know. To explore this knowledge, and to watch it grow, is a pleasurable thing; the reader visits a world that is at once familiar and miraculous. When a writer uses his secret wounds as his starting point, he is, whether he is aware of it or not, putting great faith in humanity. My confidence comes from the belief that all humans beings resemble one another, that others carry wounds like mine—and that they will therefore understand. All true literature rises from this childish, hopeful certainty that we resemble one another. When a writer shuts himself up in a room for years on end, with this gesture he suggests a single humanity, a world without a center. -- Orhan Pamuk, the Nobel Lecture, 2006
The question we writers are asked most often, the favorite question is: Why do you write? I write because I have an innate need to write. I write because I can’t do normal work as other people do. I write because I want to read books like the ones I write. I write because I am angry at everyone. I write because I love sitting in a room all day writing. I write because I can partake of real life only by changing it. I write because I want others, the whole world, to know what sort of life we lived, and continue to live, in Istanbul, in Turkey. I write because I love the smell of paper, pen, and ink. I write because I believe in literature, more than I believe in anything else. I write because it is a habit, a passion. I write because I am afraid of being forgotten. I write because I like the glory and interest that writing brings. I write to be alone. Perhaps I write because I hope to understand why I am so very, very angry at everyone. I write because once I have begun a novel, an essay, a page I want to finish it. I write because everyone expects me to write. I write because I have a childish belief in the immortality of libraries, and in the way my books sit on the shelf. I write because it is exciting to turn all life’s beauties and riches into words. I write not to tell a story but to compose a story. I write because I wish to escape from the foreboding that there is a place I must go but—as in my dream—can’t quite get to. I write because I never managed to be happy. I write to be happy. --Orhan Pamuk, the Nobel Lecture, 2006
[C]ontrary to what we’ve been taught, there may be just one universal story. Someone loses something. –Ken Foster
[T]he best writers reveal something about themselves that a smarter person would choose to hide. –Ken Foster
Fiction, in its groping way, is drawn to those moments of discomfort when society asks more than its individual members can, or wish to, provide. Ordinary people experiencing friction on the page is what warms our hands and hearts as we write. –John Updike
I once asked this literary agent what writing paid the best, and he said, “Ransom notes.” --Gene Hackman, as Harry Zinn in Get Shorty.
No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. –Robert Frost
As Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr., once commented upon reviewing his young son’s homework, “I liked your essay … and know that you must have had fun writing it. There is always a little thrill one gets from saying things well.” Arthur, Jr. remarks: “This last sentence for some reason has lingered in my mind ever since. It remains true.”
I don’t like eloquence. If it isn’t effective enough to pierce your hide, it’s tiresome; and if it is effective enough, it muddles your thoughts. –Dashiell Hammett
A writer’s brain, at least a quarter of it, is writing all the time. He’ll hear something and automatically turn it around backwards. When I’m talking to people, part of my brain is always listening, and I even listen to myself as I ramble on. –Harlan Howard
The most important thing to remember about back story is that (a) everyone has a history and (b) most of it isn’t very interesting. Stick to the parts that are, and don’t get carried away with the rest. Long life stories are best received in bars, and only then an hour before closing time, and if you are buying. –Stephen King
[T]wo-thirds of happiness is to know that the people you love are nearby in great harmony; the missing third—doing things with them instead of remaining at your desk as that faintly ridiculous figure at the end of a long corridor, its eyes fixed on some page, moving words from one place to another—can be dispensed with when there is no other way out. –Louis Begley
Samuel Beckett’s advice to young writers: “Pare it down. Pare it down.”
The author seems determined to put down on paper every single fact he has gathered in his seven years of preparation. (Historical novelists call this “research rapture.”) --Max Byrd
Phillip Roth once said there are only 4,000 readers in the U.S., and once you’ve sold a book to each one of them, you’re done, that’s the end of it. –Edith Grossman
Like everything else, playwriting is a dialectical exercise. There’s no shake-and-bake formula of this much or that much. Writing is a series of mistakes that you correct. It’s always a struggle, and the nice thing about the theater is that you don’t have to do it all by yourself. –Tony Kushner
To me, truth is related to silence, to reflection, to the practice of writing. Speech is not a fount of truth but a pale and provisional version of writing. –J. M. Coetzee
I want to start from some imagined, highly improbable, highly fantastic but not impossible fact and move from mental reality into social reality. That is, I think, the way of true art: not from the bottom up but from the top down. –Harry Mulisch
In a book of 207 pages, Bragg includes more than 400 single-sentence paragraphs—a well-established distress signal, recognized by book readers and term-paper graders alike. –David Lipsky
I always write a thing first and then think about it afterward, which is not a bad procedure, because the easiest way to have consecutive thoughts is to start putting them down. –E. B. White
When you say something, make sure you have said it. The chances of your having said it are only fair. –E. B. White
I am very impressed with the mind’s ability to make a complete shift, to keep a corner free. I like the fact that the universe is alive, that it is moving and growing. Hearing yourself think—that’s really what it is for a writer. –Madeline L’Engle
When one hears of a publisher being shot by an author, it is well to have all the facts before us before expressing disapprobation. –James Payn, quoted by Paul Collins
To be a novelist or a short story writer, you first have to pretend to be a novelist or a short story writer. –Charles Baxter
Easy reading is damn hard writing. –Nathaniel Hawthorne
The reader deserves an honest opinion. If he doesn't deserve it, give it to him anyhow. –John Ciardi
Richard Cody taught composition, a slender Englishman sitting at a table on a raised platform, lecturing drily on the art of the essay, which he described as a 440-yard dash through natural obstacles, over rough terrain, an intellectual exercise meant to be esthetically elegant. --Garrison Keillor
All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know. --Ernest Hemingway
I guess maybe there are two kinds of writers; writers who write stories and writers who write writing. –Raymond Chandler
The ideal mystery is one you would read if the end was missing. –Raymond Chandler
The thing about writers is that they never seem to get any better than their first work ... This bothers me a lot. You look back and their last work is no improvement on their first. I feel I have an obligation to improve, and I worry about that. –Ken Kesey
The best time to plan a book is while you're doing the dishes. –Agatha Christie
Novelists do not write as birds sing, by the push of nature. It is part of the job that there should be much routine and some daily stuff on the level of carpentry. –William Golding
What people are ashamed of usually makes a good story. –F. Scott Fitzgerald
Nothing stinks like a pile of unpublished writing. –Sylvia Path
I'm privately convinced that most of the really bad writing the world's ever seen has been done under the influence of what's called inspiration. Writing is very hard work and knowing what you're doing the whole time. –Shelby Foote
If you don't write your books, nobody else will do it for you. No one else has lived your life. –Jose Saramago
The great thing about human language is that it prevents us from sticking to the matter at hand. –Lewis Thomas
Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass. –Anton Chekhov
Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing. –Norman Mailer
Mark Twain used to say that when he would formulate a character he would suddenly realize he was meeting them for the second time; he met them the first time on the river. –David Milch
Roger Rosenblatt was one of my teachers at Harvard, and he said something, he may have been quoting, I don’t know, but he said, “Good writers have good accidents,” and it’s because it’s the subconscious that really does it. –Mark Helprin
Literature can do with any amount of egotism; but the merest pinch of narcissism spoils the broth. –John Updike
If you can't annoy somebody, there's little point in writing. –Kingsley Amis
While I was looking in at all this rickrack, Mr. Idea Man spoke up from his Barcalounger at the back of my head, as he sometimes does, and for reasons no writer seems to fully understand. I have said, on one occasion or another, that the “I have an idea for a story” moment comes when very common things are perceived in an entirely new way or in some configuration. That usually shuts people up because it sounds plausible. It is plausible, and it is part of the “I have an idea” moment, but there’s more to it. I just can’t explain what the more is, even after all these years. I can say that it sometimes feels like being shot in the brain. –Stephen King
If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it. --Elmore Leonard
Never open your book with the weather. –Elmore Leonard
I can’t teach people to write but, like an old golf pro, I can go around with them and perhaps take a few strokes off their game. –Kurt Vonnegut
They say writing the first line of a book is the hardest part. Thank God that’s over. –Willie Nelson, in The Facts of Life and Other Dirty Jokes; also: They say the first
sentence in any speech is always the hardest. Well, that one's behind me, anyway. --Wislawa Szymborska, when she accepted the 1996 Nobel Prize for Literature
One can never be alone enough when one writes. –Kafka
I need solitude for my writing. Not like a hermit--that wouldn't be enough--but like a dead man. –Franz Kafka
When asked what his advice is for aspiring writers, Richard Ford said, "Try to talk yourself out of it. As a life, it's much too solitary, it makes you obsessive, the rewards seem to be much too inward for most people, and too much rides on luck. Other than that, it's great.”
Unless you think of yourself as a writer, you never will be. –James Kelman
Reading books about writing is, in my experience, like reading books about sex: I’d rather be doing it. –Holly Brubach
Creating a story that lives on the page, characters that live within it, takes time, endless practice, a measure of luck, and also a sort of pathological refusal to be put off by failure. –Lynn Freed
It doesn’t get remarked very often that writing is not a problem confined to lawyers. Writing is a problem confined to the human species. –Prof. Jethro K. Lieberman
The pen stopped moving when the heart stood still. –Charles Isherwood
Writing the last page of the first draft is the most enjoyable moment in writing. It's one of the most enjoyable moments in life, period. –Nicholas Sparks
Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way. –E. L. Doctorow
English departments all over the country have installed the heresy that artists know what the hell they’re doing. If you wrote a play about three women, you must have set out to write a play about three women. How do you get your ideas? No artist who is honest can answer. –David Mamet
Take the time to write. You can do your life's work in half an hour a day. –Robert Hass
Express a life that has never found expression. --W. B. Yeats
All sorrows can be borne, if you put them into a story. –Isak Dinesen
If you make a better book the world will build a mousetrap at your door. --Gilbert Sorrentino
Writers spend all their time preoccupied with just the things that their fellow men and women spend their time trying to avoid thinking about. ... It takes great courage to look where you have to look, which is in yourself, in your experience, in your relationship with fellow beings, your relationship to the earth, to the spirit or to the first cause--to look at them and make something of them. --Harry Crews
There is only one way to defeat the enemy, and that is to write as well as one can. The best argument is an undeniably good book. –Saul Bellow
There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up a pen to write. --William Makepeace Thackeray
I know some very great writers, writers you love who write beautifully and have made a great deal of money, and not one of them sits down routinely feeling wildly enthusiastic and confident. Not one of them writes elegant first drafts. All right, one of them does, but we do not like her very much. –Anne Lamott
The world may be full of fourth-rate writers, but it’s also full of fourth-rate readers. –Stan Barstow
Stories are for those late hours in the night when you can't remember how you got from where you were to where you are. Stories are for eternity, when memory is erased, when there is nothing to remember but the story. –Tim O’Brien
I leave out the parts that people skip. –Elmore Leonard
I have tried for much of my life to write as if I was composing my sentences to be read posthumously. –Christopher Hitchens
I like grit, I like love and death, I'm tired of irony. ... A lot of good fiction is sentimental. ... The novelist who refuses sentiment refuses the full spectrum of human behavior, and then he just dries up. ... I would rather give full vent to all human loves and disappointments, and take a chance on being corny, than die a smartass. –Jim Harrison
[writers should ask themselves three questions] Who wants what from whom? What happens if they don’t get it? Why now? --David Mamet
It's a nervous work. The state that you need to write is the state that others are paying large sums to get rid of. –Shirley Hazzard
A writer never has an excuse for not working. If any of you think of taking up the business, you will have to remember that the world is full of blank sheets of paper waiting to be filled, and endless hours in which you should have completed your daily thousand words. –John Mortimer
If the true artist ever weeps it probably is … when he first discovers the fearful price that he has to pay for the privilege of writing in the English language. –Thomas Hardy
