All Quotes By Tag: Writing

“It is not the task of a writer to ‘tell all,’ or even to decide what to leave in, but to decide what to leave out. Whatever remains, that meager sum of this profane division, that’s the bastard chimera we call a ‘story.’ I am not building, but cutting away. And all stories, whether advertised as truth or admitted falsehoods, are fictions, cleft from the objective facts by the aforementioned action of cutting away. A pound of flesh. A pile of sawdust. Discarded chips of Carrara marble. And what’s left over.”Houses Under The Sea”

“I love working with my hands. My writing is rough, my paper bruised with ink stains.”

“Go where the pain is, go where the pleasure is.”

“Writer’s block’ is just a fancy way of saying ‘I don’t feel like doing any work today.”

“To begin impatiently is the worst mistake a writer can make”

“You know you’re writing well when you’re throwing good stuff into the wastebasket.”

“At one time I thought the most important thing was talent. I think now that — the young man or the young woman must possess or teach himself, train himself, in infinite patience, which is to try and to try and to try until it comes right. He must train himself in ruthless intolerance. That is, to throw away anything that is false no matter how much he might love that page or that paragraph. The most important thing is insight, that is … curiosity to wonder, to mull, and to muse why it is that man does what he does. And if you have that, then I don’t think the talent makes much difference, whether you’ve got that or not.[Press conference, University of Virginia, May 20, 1957]”

“It’s a finger snapping kind of day.”

“My heart in passion, and my head on rhymes.”

“I don’t see how you can write anything of value if you don’t offend someone.”

“Sometimes you have to go on when you don’t feel like it, and sometimes you’re doing good work when if feels like all you’re managing is to shovel shit from a sitting position.”

“1. Write every day2. Write what interests you.3. Write for the child inside of you. (Or the adult, if you are writing adult books.)4. Write with honest emotion5. Be careful of being facile6. Be wary of preaching7. Be prepared for serendipityFinally I would remind you of something that Churchill told a group of school boys: “Never give up. Never give up. Never, never, never give up.”

“A word only writes Its night and ridesIts dream.”

“The main question to a novel is — did it amuse? were you surprised at dinner coming so soon? did you mistake eleven for ten? were you too late to dress? and did you sit up beyond the usual hour? If a novel produces these effects, it is good; if it does not — story, language, love, scandal itself cannot save it. It is only meant to please; and it must do that or it does nothing.”

“She thought a writer should work harder writing a book than she did reading it.”