Quotes on “writing”

Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the back yard and shot it.

You can't blame a writer for what the characters say.

If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.

The world is a hellish place, and bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering.

A great writer reveals the truth even when he or she does not wish to.

A lie, sometimes, can be truer than the truth, which is why fiction gets written.

The thing about a story is that you dream it as you tell it, hoping that others might then dream along with you, and in this way memory and imagination and language combine to make spirits in the head. There is the illusion of aliveness.

That's what fiction is for. It's for getting at the truth when the truth isn't sufficient for the truth.

Loneliness sometimes gives me a quantity of creativeness - you're drinking another glass of wine and you're feeling even worse. Art doesn't work without pain; art also exists for compensating pain.

Everybody gets told to write about what they know. The trouble with many of us is that at the earlier stages of life we think we know everything- or to put it more usefully, we are often unaware of the scope and structure of our ignorance.

A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.

The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.

The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.

Why did I write? Because I found life unsatisfactory.

What’s writing really about? It’s about trying to take fuller possession of the reality of your life.

Sometimes a book isn't a heartbreaking work of staggering genius.Sometimes it's the only story you knew how to tell.

Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.

Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.