Quotes about Writing

A well-made sentence, I think, is a thing of beauty.

It is the writer's privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart.

A writer is congenitally unable to tell the truth and that is why we call what he writes fiction.

I'm a failed poet. Maybe every novelist wants to write poetry first, finds he can't, and then tries the short story, which is the most demanding form after poetry. And, failing at that, only then does he take up novel writing.

I had learned a little about writing from Soldier's Pay - how to approach language, words: not with seriousness so much as an essayist does, but with a kind of alert respect, as you approach dynamite; even with joy, as you approach women: perhaps with the same secretly unscrupulous intentions.

I don't mean a 1905 Republican---I don't know what his Tennessee politics were, or if he had any---I mean a 1961 Republican. He was more: he was a Conservative. Like this: a Republican is a mad who made his money; a Liberal is a man who inherited his; a Democrat is a barefooted Liberal in a cross-country race; a Conservative is a Republican who has learned to read and write.

Read, read, read. Read everything - trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You'll absorb it. Then write. If it is good, you'll find out. If it's not, throw it out the window.

CiteÅŸte, citeÅŸte, citeÅŸte. CiteÅŸte totul — gunoi, clasicii, r?ii ÅŸi bunii, ÅŸi vezi cum scriu. La fel ca un tâmplar care lucreaz? ca ucenic ÅŸi îÅŸi studiaz? maestrul. CiteÅŸte! Vei absorbi asta. Apoi scrie. Dac? ai scris ceva bun, vei afla. Dac? nu, arunc? ce-ai scris pe fereastr?.

For me, I used to be shy towards journalism because it wasn't poetry. And then I realized that the events that I covered in essays that became journalism were actually great because they inspired me, and they became my muse.

Every weekday morning, I picture my first paragraph while I hike with my dog Milo near Mulholland Drive, looking out over the San Fernando Valley. I edit the paragraph, then memorize it, so that when I get back home and sit down at my computer, the blank screen's tyranny lasts only a second or two. A brief reign!

What began the change was the very writing itself. Let no one lightly set about such a work. Memory, once waked, will play the tyrant.

Try to develop actual work habits, and even though you have a busy life, try to reserve an hour, say - or more - a day to write. Some very good things have been written on an hour a day.