Quotes on “writing”

Indeed, learning to write may be part of learning to read. For all I know, writing comes out of a superior devotion to reading.

My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.

It's none of their business that you have to learn how to write. Let them think you were born that way.

The first draft of anything is shit.

The hard part about writing a novel is finishing it.

There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it's like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.

If a writer stops observing he is finished. Experience is communicated by small details intimately observed.

There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.

After writing a story I was always empty and both sad and happy, as though I had made love, and I was sure this was a very good story although I would not know truly how good until I read it over the next day.

it is all very well for you to write simply and the simpler the better. But do not start to think so damned simply. Know how complicated it is and then state it simply.

All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.

There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.

When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.

Remember to get the weather in your damn book--weather is very important.

I've seen you, beauty, and you belong to me now, whoever you are waiting for and if I never see you again, I thought. You belong to me and all Paris belongs to me and I belong to this notebook and this pencil.

I stand in the mist and cry, thinking of myself standing in the mist and crying, and wondering if I will ever be able to use this experience in a book.

The desire to write grows with writing.

The soul should always stand ajar, ready to welcome the ecstatic experience.