All Quotes By Tag: Writing

“When I begin to doubt my ability to work the word, I simply read another writer and know I have nothing to worry about. My contest is only with myself, to do it right, with power, and force, and delight, and gamble.”

“If you want to be a writer, you have to write every day… You don’t go to a well once but daily. You don’t skip a child’s breakfast or forget to wake up in the morning…”

“Maybe love was meant to save us from ourselves.”

“Writing is the only profession where no one considers you ridiculous if you earn no money.”

“She wildly burned for the one she loved and he stood there watching, hoping he too would catch a blaze from the violence stirring in her heart.”

“What is your advice to young writers?” “Drink, fuck and smoke plenty of cigarettes.”

“You’re not a bad person, you’re just a little bit different and I’m a sucker for that.”

“I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English―it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don’t let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in. When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don’t mean utterly, but kill most of them―then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are wide apart. An adjective habit, or a wordy, diffuse, flowery habit, once fastened upon a person, is as hard to get rid of as any other vice.”

“I like to write when I feel spiteful. It is like having a good sneeze.”(Letter to Cynthia Asquith, November 1913)”

“I love being a writer. What I can’t stand is the paperwork.”

“I was supposed to write a romantic comedy, but my characters broke up.”

“Fiction was invented the day Jonah arrived home and told his wife that he was three days late because he had been swallowed by a whale..”

“Writing is like getting married. One should never commit oneself until one is amazed at one’s luck.”

“Be ruthless about protecting writing days, i.e., do not cave in to endless requests to have “essential” and “long overdue” meetings on those days. The funny thing is that, although writing has been my actual job for several years now, I still seem to have to fight for time in which to do it. Some people do not seem to grasp that I still have to sit down in peace and write the books, apparently believing that they pop up like mushrooms without my connivance. I must therefore guard the time allotted to writing as a Hungarian Horntail guards its firstborn egg.”

“Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.”