All Quotes By Tag: Writing

“One writes to make a home for oneself, on paper, in time and in others’ minds.”

“Ineluctable modality of the visible: at least that if no more, thought through my eyes. Signatures of all things I am here to read, seaspawn and seawrack, the nearing tide, that rusty boot. Snotgreen, bluesilver, rust: coloured signs. Limits of the diaphane. But he adds: in bodies. Then he was aware of them bodies before of them coloured. How? By knocking his sconce against them, sure. Go easy. Bald he was and a millionaire, MAESTRODI COLOR CHE SANNO. Limit of the diaphane in. Why in? Diaphane, adiaphane. If you can put your five fingers through it it is a gate, if not a door. Shut your eyes and see.”

“I earn the magic of words by writing.I learn the myth of worlds by imagining.”

“A book unwritten is a delightful universe of infinite possibilities. Set down one word, however, and it immediately becomes earthbound. Set down one sentence and it’s halfway to being just like every other bloody book that’s ever been written.”

“My weakness has always been to prefer the large intention of an unskilful artist to the trivial intention of an accomplished one: in other words, I am more interested in the high ideas of a feeble executant than in the high execution of a feeble thinker.”

“Woman, especially her sexuality, provides the object of endless commentary , description, supposition. But the result of all the telling only deepens the enigma and makes woman’s erotic force something that male storytelling can never quite explain or contain.”

“A novel is like a dream in which everyone is you. They’re all parts of yourself.”

“God, how impossible life is without money. Nothing can ever overcome it, it’s everything when it’s anything. How can I write in peace with endless worries of money, money, money? (“Disappearing Act”)”

“But I think Cybil was my biggest fan. She cut out my articles and hung them in her locker and we were always cracking up how if you wrote the simplest, most obvious thing in the world people thought you were a genius.”

“I write to reach eternity”

“Write down the thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought for are commonly the most valuable.”

“Many writing texts caution against asking friends to read your stuff, suggesting you’re not apt to get a very unbiased opinion[.] … It’s unfair, according to this view, to put a pal in such a position. What happens if he/she feels he/she has to say, “I’m sorry, good buddy, you’ve written some great yarns in the past but this one sucks like a vacuum cleaner”?The idea has some validity, but I don’t think an unbiased opinion is exactly what I’m looking for. And I believe that most people smart enough to read a novel are also tactful enough to find a gentler mode of expression than “This sucks.” (Although most of us know that “I think this has a few problems” actually means “This sucks,” don’t we?)”

“What do you think is my favourite book? Just now, I mean; I change every three days. “Wuthering Heights.” Emily Bronte was quite young when she wrote it, and had never been outside of Haworth churchyard. She had never known any men in her life; how could she imagine a man like Heathcliff?I couldn’t do it, and I’m quite young and never outside the John Grier Asylum – I’ve had every chance in the world. Sometimes a dreadful fear comes over me that I’m not a genius. Will you be awfully disappointed, Daddy, if I don’t turn out to be a great author?”

“Humility is not a virtue in a writer, it is an absolute necessity.”

“I would say that music is the easiest means in which to express, but since words are my talent, I must try to express clumsily in words what the pure music would have done better.”