All Quotes By Tag: Writing

“The fun of talk is to explore, but much of it and all that is irresponsible should not be written. Once written you have to stand by it. You may have said it to see whether you believed it or not.”

“The cry that ‘fantasy is escapist’ compared to the novel is only an echo of the older cry that novels are ‘escapist’ compared with biography, and to both cries one should make the same answer: that freedom to invent outweighs loyalty to mere happenstance, the accidents of history; and good readers should know how to filter a general applicability from a particular story.”

“No book can be written till it wants to be written, till it shouts to be written, and raises up a persistent din in the writer’s head. And then, if you want peace, you just have to pull it out and freeze it in print. Nothing less would do.”

“Another unsettling element in modern art is that common symptom of immaturity, the dread of doing what has been done before.”

“It is the fate of most men who mingle with the world, and attain even the prime of life, to make many real friends, and lose them in the course of nature. It is the fate of all authors or chroniclers to create imaginary friends, and lose them in the course of art. Nor is this the full extent of their misfortunes; for they are required to furnish an account of them besides.”

“A novel is an impression, not an argument; and there the matter must rest.”

“Characters who simply have goals opposed by others do not create the effects of a story.”

“Good editorial writing has less to do with winning an argument, since the other side is mostly not listening, than with telling the guys on your side how they ought to sound when they’re arguing.”

“You have to stop and freeze the moment,” he told me I had told her. “You have to make yourself remember by repeating it in your head over and over. You have to write to preserve your sanity.”

“Until you know who you are you can’t write.”

“The historian records, but the novelist creates.”

“Menulis itu peduli. Menulis itu mencinta.”

“The only way you can write is by the light of the bridges burning behind you.”

“If you wrote something for which someone sent you a cheque, if you cashed the cheque and it didn’t bounce, and if you then paid the light bill with the money, I consider you talented.”

“I write because, if I don’t, my characters will murder me in my sleep.”