Quotes about Writing

I started working for the 'NY Observer' when I was 33. After I had been writing for them for about a year and a half the editor said, 'Your stories are the most talked about stories in the 'Observer'; you should have your own column.'

I feel like some sort of fiction-writing hobo, jumping trains and always hoping I'll find a good place to start a fire in the next town. And I keep having these panicky episodes where I corner my husband and rant at him: 'I don't have anywhere to write! I can't write! I don't have a place to write!'

Some of what I wrote bordered on blasphemy....If there was a God, He would have to be truth. And in that case, candor--however impertinent--would be more pleasing to Him than posturing.

I hate thinking about it, teaching about it, and writing about it. But the plain truth is that hell is real and real people go there for eternity.

Despite all the cynical things writers have said about writing for money, the truth is we write for love. That is why it is so easy to exploit us.

I have been somebody who has not written a great deal about the truth of my family's life.

The worst service, I fancy, that anyone can do for truth, is to set silly people writing on its behalf.

No matter how true I believe what I am writing to be, if the reader cannot also participate in that truth, then I have failed.

It's hard to do fiction and nonfiction simultaneously.

The catchword I use with my classes is: The authority of the writer always overcomes the skepticism of the reader.

I see a skill developing of writing about not just feelings that I'm feeling, but things that I deeply care about as well.

To rage, to lust, to write to, to commend, All is the purlieu of the god of love.