About Writing Quotes

#1. The funny thing about writing is I think a lot of people assume that you're sitting in a garret with a quill pen for hour after hour.

Lincoln Child

#2. One of the things I learned about writing a memoir is you can't drag the reader through everything. Every human life is worth 20 memoirs.

Andre Dubus III

#3. The nice thing about writing at home is that it's almost as though I'm doing it already. I get out of bed thinking of my work, and I don't have to go anywhere to do it.

Patrick DeWitt

#4. Only assholes talk about writing

Charles Bukowski

#5. Two things are difficult about writing a novel. Starting and finishing

Bangambiki Habyarimana

#6. The band projects just took natural priority. I didn't really have a solo career, just wanted to share the music in another way and to learn more about writing, recording, etcetera.

Ken Hensley

#7. Reading and writing don't inevitably go together. You can read without learning a thing about writing, grammar, or spelling, although, you certainly can't learn anything about writing, grammar, or spelling unless you read.

Frank Smith

#8. Stop thinking about writing as art. Think of it as work. If you're an artist, whatever you do is going to be art. If you're not an artist, at least you can do a good day's work.

Paddy Chayefsky

#9. You really don't understand the first thing about writing ... for one thing, early in the morning is the worst possible time. the brain is like a wet sponge at that hour. And for another, real writing is a question of staring into space and waiting for the right ideas.

Cornelia Funke

#10. [When asked about Writing Conferences]
You meet people that will change your life.

Susan Wingate

#11. There's something really nice about writing something on Wednesday and watching it being performed live for a studio audience on Tuesday. You never really get that with novels.

Jennifer Weiner

#12. Actually, that's one of the things I was thinking about writing a story about me, loosely based or autobiographical. I just don't want to be like some people that are in their twenties and writing autobiographies.

Matthew McGrory

#13. Some people think about writing, I write.

Starr Gardinier

#14. I see myself only sporadically as a teacher and consistently as a writer. Teaching is how I pay the bills ... and fortunately, for my students, I can intellectualize about writing, and I can talk about it well, and I like to talk about it.

Vijay Seshadri

#15. I suppose, the natural outgrowth about writing about two friends, it becomes about their friendship, and the complexities of it, and the way personality plays off each other, and what they each like to do, separately and together.

Alison McGhee

#16. There's a lot of rage in my head. I like the friction that means there is nothing relaxing about writing a poem. I can't afford to relax in any area of life. You have to keep your senses awake to all the complacency that kicks in - particularly for the English.

Alice Oswald

#17. Leo had once joked about writing an allegorical sketch where Parody packed its bags, shut up shop and put a sign on the door which read: "Closed. Any inquiries please contact the Real".

Patrick McGuinness

#18. The hard part about writing a novel is finishing it.

Ernest Hemingway,

#19. I think my voice worked out fine, but it was a lot of work for me. And I was very self-conscious about it. I was a bit self-conscious about writing lyrics too.

Jerry Harrison

#20. The big thing about writing is three commands: Have fun. Don't think. Don't care.

Richard Bach

#21. I've been on the Web from the beginning of the Web. The good part about writing about technology is that you never run out of ideas, because it's changing so fast. The bad part is that it's changing so fast that there's a million new products and ideas every day and every week.

Walt Mossberg

#22. When I left the Senate in 1979, there were several publishers who had approached me about writing an autobiography, and I knew that politicians write books for many reasons, but at that time, I just thought I wasn't ready and my story wasn't over, and I knew I had a new life ahead of me.

Edward Brooke

#23. I've learned a lot about writing from listening to my students talk.

Marilynne Robinson

#24. I'm passionate again about writing. This is important to me; it's got to be the comeback book.

Jeffrey Archer

#25. One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time ... give it, give it all, give it now.

Annie Dillard

#26. One of the things about writing fiction is that you create people that you feel, more or less, as though you know.

Marilynne Robinson

#27. When I was younger, I suppose I was interested in checking out as much about writing as I could: bad, weird, irritating, even things not-to-my-taste. Now I am less open. I will decide after a few pages if I want to stay in the world of the book, and if I don't, I put it down. I have less time left.

Susan Minot

#28. I always tell audiences when I talk about writing: Writing isn't something I do; writing is something that I am. I am writing - it's just an expression of me.

Wayne Dyer

#29. [Speaking about writing her first novel] You have to be passionate enough about it and I was.

Kristyn Van Cleave

#30. One of the amazing things about writing fiction is that you do get to be other people.

Deborah Eisenberg

#31. People on the outside think there's something magical about writing, that you go up in the attic at midnight and cast the bones and come down in the morning with a story, but it isn't like that. You sit in back of the typewriter and you work, and that's all there is to it.

Harlan Ellison

#32. The funny thing about writing is that whether you're doing well or doing it poorly, it looks the exact same. That's actually one of the main ways that writing is different from ballet dancing.

John Green

#33. 'What It Is' was based on this class I've been teaching for 10 years - I wanted to write a book about writing that didn't mention stuff like story structure, protagonists, and all those things that we know about only because they already exist in stories.

Lynda Barry

#34. The best way to learn about writing is to study the work of other writers you admire.

Jeffery Deaver

#35. If you want to be a writer, don't worry so much about writing. Read as much as you can. Read as many different writers as you can. Soak up the styles.

R.L. Stine

#36. I never thought about writing the part where the pirates get on board the ship. I wasn't interested in that. I'm not an action director. I'm sure that other guys could do it a lot better. I couldn't put my heart into it.

Tobias Lindholm

#37. The best thing about writing is the reader

Girish Kohli

#38. The good thing about writing a true story is that you don't have to worry about giving an impression of realism.

Laurent Binet

#39. I don't care about writing really.

Ang Lee

#40. I think when you're 17 and you're angry, you're angry about very short-term things. And there's nothing wrong about writing that record. It's a very real record to write; it's the realest record I could write when I was 17. The problem is, when you're 28, it's not the same thing; it can be a put-on.

Patrick Stump

#41. Did you ever think about writing memoirs? You are a writer, and it may be interesting for people to read your story.
"I hate memoirs. But I am sure I will write a book about the Bowery Mission," Michael said.

Stevan V. Nikolic

#42. What about WRITING it first and rationalizing it afterwards?

Larry Wall

#43. Don't talk about writing. Write. Don't show unfinished work to anyone. Don't show finished work to non-writers. Get your opinions, not from friends and family, but by sending your work out to editors. An endless stream of rejection slips means you need to learn more. So learn more.

Holly Lisle

#44. Before I published any of my own stories, I read a great many stories by people as passionate about writing as I was, and I learned something from everyone I read
something most important what I should not try to write.

Dorothy Allison

#45. One of the best things about writing is how it redeems, not to mention recycles, all of one's prior experiences, including or perhaps especially the failures.

Lois McMaster Bujold

#46. If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don't listen to writers talking about writing or themselves.

Lillian Hellman

#47. Learn about writing from reading. That is the right way to do it.

Maxwell Perkins

#48. Will and I are thinking about writing a movie," Ben said. "It's called Theater Closed for Repairs.

Lisa Goldstein

#49. It's much easier to teach writing, because people are less shy about writing. If they're in a group, nobody can see what they're writing. When you're drawing, people get a little more nervous.

Lynda Barry

#50. There is something very cool about writing your worst memories through someone else's eyes. You start to see what happened to you ... almost as if it happened to somebody else. Especially if that made-up person is nice, it's a great exercise because there are many mean people in this world.

Carol Plum-Ucci

#51. Really important books to me are the classics. I try very hard to read them well - you know, especially once I got serious about writing. So, reading Tolstoy several times - 'War and Peace,' 'The Kreutzer Sonata' - all those were really important to me.

Karl Marlantes

#52. I think one of the things about writing in the studio is that the song hasn't matured, if you like, so quite often the vocals are early attempts. Whereas once you've taken it out on the road a bit, you learn more about a song.

Peter Gabriel

#53. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sakes. Now, I mean, I'm talking about singing in the shower, I'm talking about dancing to the radio, I'm talking about writing a poem to a friend
a lousy poem.

Kurt Vonnegut

#54. One of the first things that helped me to understand certain things about writing was seeing 'The Iceman Cometh' in the Village when I was a kid, before I ever became a newspaperman, and realizing that the world I knew could also be the subject of some amazing stuff.

Pete Hamill

#55. In teaching writing, I'm learning new things about writing.

David B. Coe

#56. It's hard to say when my interest in writing began, or how. My mother read to my sister and me every night, and we always loved playing make-believe games. I had a well-primed imagination. I didn't start thinking about writing as a serious pursuit, a career I could have, until after college.

Sara Zarr

#57. The great thing about writing fiction is that you can do whatever the fuck you want, go as far as you are willing to go, and laugh at the people who take it seriously.

Richard P. Denney

#58. The wonderful thing about writing fiction is that no one is stopping you. There's no one saying, 'You can't do that.'

Rebecca Stead

#59. The fools who write articles about me think that one morning I suddenly decided to write and began to produce masterpieces. There is no special trick about writing, or painting either. I wrote constantly for 15 years before I produced anything with any solidity to it.

Sherwood Anderson

#60. The only certainty about writing and trying to be a writer is that it has to be done, not dreamed of or planned and never written, or talked about (the ego eventually falls apart like a soaked sponge), but simply written; it's a dreadful, awful fact that writing is like any other work.

Janet Frame

#61. For me, most of the anxiety and difficulty of writing takes place in the act of not writing. It's the procrastination, the thinking about writing that's difficult.

Adam Mansbach

#62. The mysterious thing about writing poetry is that when you're - when things are going poorly, when you're not thinking well, even making two sentences together is extremely hard and I just can't make the connections.

Edward Hirsch

#63. I'm disciplined about writing. I get up every day knowing I have to produce work. I'm less concerned about other aspects of the job, such as the prizes and promotions. Promoting my work can be awkward, unless I feel sociable enough. Prizes encourage me to work harder on my next project.

Sefi Atta

#64. The hardest thing about writing is writing.

Nora Ephron

#65. The precise metaphysical procedures by which a book goes about writing another book need not concern us here. Suffice to say that our human scribes remain entirely ignorant of their possession by bibliographic forces; the agent in question never doubts that his authorship is authentic.

James K. Morrow

#66. Writing a book isn't just about 'writing a book.' Unfortunately, it's about selling it, and getting it out to the masses.

Margaret Aranda

#67. Still, something about writing made me spend large hours of my free time at my desk.

John Grisham

#68. Writing about writing is a bit like talking about a conversation you are having; it tends to obscure desperation about where the next word is coming from.

Renata Adler

#69. All of the most important lessons about writing I learned from my father. He never set out to teach me anything, it would just be something he said casually in conversation.

Joss Whedon

#70. What fascinates me about writing is wrestling thought into reality and creating a new world that is forever.

Dennis R. Miller

#71. It troubles me that people speak about writing for money as ugly and distasteful.

Joyce Maynard

#72. Clear writing is universal. People talk about writing down to an audience or writing up to an audience; I think that's nonsense. If you write in a way that is clear, transparent, and elegant, it will reach everyone.

Malcolm Gladwell

#73. I usually do my writing in a very nice room, my studio, which is in the attic of our house in Wisconsin. But the nice thing about writing is that I can do it in many places. So sometimes I'll write in coffee shops.

Kevin Henkes

#74. I eat broccoli. I think about the plot. I pace in circles for hours, counter-clockwise, listening to music. I try to think of one detail in the scene I'm about to write that I'm really excited about writing. Until I can come up with that one detail, I pace.

Matthew Tobin Anderson

#75. The tough thing about writing is you go into a room alone, you close the door and you do your work.

Randy Wayne White

#76. The two hardest things about writing are starting and not stopping.

Stewart O'Nan

#77. It's very lucky to be able to do a job where I get to sit about writing plays all day and going to the theatre. The downside, I suppose, is that you put it out there, and people are invited to like it or loathe it.

Laura Wade

#78. One of the most attractive things about writing your autobiography is that you're not dead.

Joseph Barbera

#79. What's the best part about writing a book?
Finishing it.

Rick Riordan

#80. 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.

Erica Jong

#81. I don't know much about writing a show or being a show-runner on a show, but I can only imagine that when you first cast a show and you first do a pilot, there are so many components that you're throwing into the mix and you're not sure how they're going to develop.

Alison Brie

#82. One of the things that's complicated about writing anything is that it's an act of narcissism, and then of course once it sails out into the world, you have to let go of it.

Bill Ayers

#83. There's something special about writing by hand, writing with a fountain pen, and there's something special about writing into a book, to take a blank book and turn it into an actual book.

Joe Haldeman

#84. It ain't just about writing on some documents,
author writes on to the readers' heart and mind.

Toba Beta

#85. 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.

William Faulkner

#86. There's nothing easy about writing. It's always difficult. It's always a struggle.

Khaled Hosseini

#87. Authors worry. We worry about writing. Worry about our editors, our agents, our reviews, and our readers. We worry about everything, including all forms of social media including blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and personal websites.

David Macinnis Gill

#88. No, I don't harbor any mystical ideas about writing, Your Honor, it's work like any other kind of craft; the power of literature, I've always thought, lies in how willful the act of making it is.

Nicole Krauss

#89. When I write, I make decent money doing it, but I don't wake up dreaming about writing.

Grant Heslov

#90. I have been successful probably because I have always realized that I knew nothing about writing and have merely tried to tell an interesting story entertainingly.

Edgar Rice Burroughs

#91. I was an avid reader, but never thought seriously about writing a novel until I was in my thirties. I took no formal fiction-writing courses and never thought about these categories when I wrote my first novel.

M.J. Rose

#92. And the nice thing about writing a novel is you take your time, you sit with the character sometimes nine years, you look very deeply at a situation, unlike in real life when we just kind of snap something out.

Sandra Cisneros

#93. Being in a rock band is about touring. It's about writing songs and it's about making records but it's also about taking a wonderful smile onto that stage and making the people feel good about themselves.

James Young

#94. Sometimes a story catches your imagination so much it has to be told. That is what I love about writing. It lets the images in your mind burst forth into words drawing a vivid picture that takes you away on a journey that would otherwise be impossible.

S. E. Smith

#95. What I said about John was that he liberated me from my anxieties about writing in a correct, acceptable way.

Harry Mathews

#96. Even the slash fiction, that's a great way to learn to work. No one really does three-act structure, but just trying to put words that make somebody else turned on, that's going to teach you more about writing than any writing college you can go to.

Steven Moffat

#97. The more I write the more I learn about writing. It is easy to say what looks good or sound good on paper until you experience it for yourself.

Jeanette Michelle

#98. You just have to see two or three feet ahead of you. This is right up there with the best advice about writing, or life, I have ever heard. So

Anne Lamott

#99. I do not think you should read about writing while you are writing.

Maxwell Perkins

#100. I can get so caught up in talking about writing with Bronte that I don't get any actual writing done.

Stephanie Morrill