Top 72 Writing Solitary Quotes
#1. When I'm writing a book, I don't have any responsibility to anyone. I'm solitary. I'm writing on my own. I write by hand. And I write every day. I mean, it's part of my daily discipline.
Patti Smith
#2. Well I've been writing books. So that, by its nature, is kind of a solitary occupation. And from time to time I have research help, but mostly I've done those completely on my own.
Caroline Kennedy
#3. The writing process for me is pretty much always the same - it's a solitary experience.
Sheryl Crow
#4. No writing on the solitary, meditative dimensions of life can say anything that has not already been said better by the wind in the pine trees.
Thomas Merton
#5. Poetry is a solitary process. One does not write poetry for the masses. Poetry is a self-involved, lofty pursuit. Songs are for the people. When I'm writing a song, I imagine performing it. I imagine giving it. It's a different aspect of communication. It's for the people.
Patti Smith
#6. To some extent, all authors are a little schizophrenic. We lead most of our lives in solitary confinement, living and breathing the books that we're writing.
Sophie Kinsella
#7. Reading and writing are solitary activities that increase a person's capacity for concentration, awareness, and conceptual thought as the person weaves immediate information with stored memories.
Kilroy J. Oldster
#8. I love getting out the house because writing is such a solitary business that even being at the library makes me feel part of the world.
Jane Green
#9. Writing is a solitary existence. Making a movie is controlled chaos - thousands of moving parts and people. Every decision is a compromise. If you're writing and you don't like how your character looks or talks, you just fix it. But in a movie, if there's something you don't like, that's tough.
Dan Brown
#10. I write in praise of the solitary act: of not feeling a trespassing tongue forced into one's mouth, one's breath smothered, nipples crushed against the ribcage, and that metallic tingling in the chin set off by a certain odd nerve: unpleasure.
Fleur Adcock
#11. It's the same thing in a way, although writing a book is a very solitary thing.
Neil Jordan
#12. It's a cliche, but true, that writing is intensely solitary and at times really lonely. I sit in one room and talk to squirrels and blue jays all day.
Douglas Coupland
#13. Writing a book is incredibly pleasurable, but very solitary. You have total control, but sometimes that can drive you insane.
Justin Halpern
#14. It's not very fashionable, but I love life, and I believe that things disappear and reappear and nothing ever solidifies, no matter how middle-class, housebroken, staid, and solitary someone's life seems to be. That, I think, is what I'm writing about.
Colum McCann
#15. Writing is a solitary endeavor, but not a lonely one. When you write, your world is populated by the characters you invent, and you feel those people filling your life.
Danielle Steel
#16. I operate in such a vacuum. I write by myself, it's a very solitary experience, and I'm not used to, I've never had a label or anyone to say, "We wanna hear a single, we gotta come back and retool some of these songs until they're more catchy."
Nicholas Thorburn
#17. Writing is a solitary endeavor, being an author is not.
Karen A. Chase
#18. Writing is a solitary pursuit and I think you have to be partially at peace with yourself, but it's the other part that's usually producing the stuff worth reading.
Craig Johnson
#19. Writing is a solitary business. It's just you and your characters and a blank page you need to fill.
Shannon Celebi
#20. Writing can be a very solitary business. It's you sat at a desk typing words into a computer. It can get lonely sometimes and lots of writers live quite isolated lives.
Paul Kane
#21. 'Et Tu, Babe' was born out of my absolute certainty that a writer's life was solitary and insular, and I was happy with that. I love reading and writing; it's my whole life.
Mark Leyner
#22. To most, being locked away in solitary with nothing but pen and paper would prove a hard punishment. What a strange creature who views this as heaven.
Richelle E. Goodrich
#23. writing is an intensely solitary endeavor, but a story isn't truly heard until many hands have held it.
Elizabeth J. Church
#24. It's true that writing is a solitary occupation, but you would be surprised at how much companionship a group of imaginary characters can offer once you get to know them.
Anne Tyler
#25. Writing is a solitary occupation. Family, friends, and society are the natural enemies of the writer. He must be alone, uninterrupted, and slightly savage if he is to sustain and complete an undertaking.
Jessamyn West
#28. Writing begins as a solitary obsession and ends up as communication.
Marty Rubin
#29. Writing is a solitary profession; you are really alone when you write. Then the emotions become well shaped and distinct. But their transition into words must be done deliberately and with rigid artistry.
F. Sionil Jose
#30. Writing is a solitary occupation, and we like it that way.
Julianne MacLean
#31. There must be an inviolate place where the choices and decisions, however imperfect, are the writer's own, where the decision must be as individual and solitary as birth or death.
Janet Frame
#32. Writing is the most disembodied art, and reading and writing are largely private and solitary experiences, so music and dance have always enchanted me as arts in which the body of the performer communicates directly to the audience, welding a kind of communion writers rarely experience.
Rebecca Solnit
#33. Writing, which is solitary, is fine company for organizing, which is communal. It just took me a while to discover that both can happen wherever you are.
Gloria Steinem
#34. I am forever an advocate of books, both the reading of them and the writing. There is something sacred to me in that community. Because writing
and reading
is a solitary business. And it's good to know I'm not alone.
Shannon Celebi
#35. Writing is one of the most solitary activities in the world.
Paulo Coelho
#36. Writing is always a solitary experience, but living, if you're lucky, is not.
Beth Harbison
#37. Writing is a solitary occupation, except for Presidential speeches and sitcoms.
Ron Brackin
#39. Research and writing are lonely occupations. It is easy to become discouraged in solitary confinement.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
#40. Writing is such a solitary occupation that it takes a long time to build up a group of professional peers with whom you genuinely identify.
Sara Sheridan
#41. Writing is such a solitary existence, and I can only do it late at night.
Paul O'Grady
#42. Writing is a solitary job, and should be taken to someone who believes in you.
Stephen King
#43. Writing is solitary. You spend so much time alone and in your own mind, telling stories.
Ruth Ozeki
#44. The writing life is essentially one of solitary confinement - if you can't deal with this, you needn't apply.
Will Self
#45. I like the busy-ness of office life. What I discovered, to my surprise, is that I love the solitary nature of writing. What happens is that you write when you're ready.
Joseph Kanon
#46. Writers of novels are so busy being solitary that they haven't time to meet one another. But then, a writer learns nothing from a writer, conversationally. If a writer has anything witty, profound or quotable to say he doesn't say it. He's no fool. He writes it.
Edna Ferber
#47. Letters were first invented for consoling such solitary wretches as myself. Having lost the substantial pleasures of seeing and possessing you, I shall in some measure compensate this loss by the satisfaction I shall find in your writing.
Heloise
#48. Writing is a solitary experience. I'm extremely superstitious. If I talk about the book or name the title out loud before finishing, I feel the energy I need to write will be drained. It's so intimate, I can't even share it with my wife.
Paulo Coelho
#49. Imaginative writing has always been a solitary and indeed a somewhat antisocial activity. Apprenticeship existed, no doubt, but it was an apprenticeship to books and not to living masters of the craft.
Madison Smartt Bell
#50. I suppose directing on set is the most fun because it's a good crack and you feel you're on the battlefield whereas writing is a fairly solitary undertaking.
Guy Ritchie
#51. I tend to write, either myself, or I sometimes write with a co-writer, my friend that lives up the road. It's usually a relatively solitary thing, but I do like coming up with ideas.
Colin Hay
#52. Painting and writing are solitary arts.
Conrad Hall
#53. Writing is a solitary activity, it requires isolation and silence.
Dacia Maraini
#54. Writing, at its heart, is a solitary pursuit, designed to make people depressoids, drug addicts, misanthropes, and antisocial weirdos.
Mindy Kaling
#55. Writing is a solitary business. It takes over your life. In some sense, a writer has no life of his own. Even when he's there, he's not really there.
Paul Auster
#56. Writing, and especially writing a novel, where you get to sit in a room by yourself with either a pen and a paper or a computer for a couple of years, is a very solitary occupation. You can read sales figures - a hundred thousand books sold, half a million books sold - but they are just numbers.
Neil Gaiman
#57. Very few people can write in a crowd. This is a very solitary occupation. I have known people more talented than me who never made it. And the primary reason was always that they couldn't stand to be alone for several hours a day. Any writer worth anything has mastered the art. The art of solitude.
Tom Robbins
#58. Writing is such a solitary thing, so it's nice, when I'm discouraged, to see people still have such faith in fiction.
Robert Boswell
#59. Online is such a brilliant, brilliant way to connect with young readers - even if they just want to tweet, 'Hey, I read your book!' - that, absolutely, I connect with that. But I also treat writing as solitary and keep it to myself as long as I can.
Patrick Ness
#60. It's funny. Writing is a solitary task, but in order to succeed at it, you need other people.
Kim Wright
#61. If any of [my stories] succeed in causing their readers to feel pleasantly uncomfortable when walking along a solitary road at nightfall, or sitting over a dying fire in the small hours, my purpose in writing them will have been attained.
M.R. James
#62. For writing is a solitary occupation, and one of its hazards is loneliness. But an advantage of loneliness is privacy, autonomy, freedom.
Joyce Carol Oates
#63. Despite my solitary life, I have found infinite joy in books and writing, and am by far too much interested in the affairs of the world to quit the scene before Nature shall claim me.
H.P. Lovecraft
#64. Every writer must acknowledge and be able to handle the unalterable fact that he has, in effect, given himself a life sentence in solitary confinement.
Peter Straub
#65. Writing can be a very solitary profession, and when deadlines are looming, it's tempting to glue myself to my desk, but I try to make sure I get out a few times a month with friends just so I don't forget what it means to be social.
Becca Fitzpatrick
#66. I have never thought of writing as a profession. It is a solitary independent activity in which practice can never bestow seniority.
John Berger
#67. Writing is solitary, so I love going out once in a while and meeting my readers. I'll often hang with them after a signing for some beers. They're invariably bright!
F. Paul Wilson
#68. You have to remember that writing itself is so solitary. You start writing because you're lonely.
Sandra Cisneros
#69. The art of writing is not as solitary as one might think. When it finally dawns on us one day that our task as writers is to share what we know of the human spirit, we suddenly discover that we were never truly alone.
Hal Zina Bennett
#70. For me, writing is a solitary thing and a personal thing. And it's weird, because when you make something that requires money and collaborators, you have to talk about them. I don't enjoy that part of it. I still want to keep it to myself.
Mike White
#71. I'm the most communal person that exists and a very solitary person. So I think writing is a form of getting to the community and being alone, and it's the best of both possible worlds.
Ariel Dorfman
#72. Writing may be a solitary endeavor, but publishing is not.
Natasha Yim
