I don’t think I can make people understand what my writing is about. That really belongs to time and the individual.
Ben Okri Quote | about writing
True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, as those move easiest who have learned to dance. ‘Tis not enough no harshness gives offence. The sound must seem an echo to the sense.
Alexander Pope quote on Writing
Why did I write? What sin to me unknown dipped me in ink, my parents , or my own?
Alexander Pope quote on reason for writing
I gave up writing blurbs because you make one friend and 200 enemies.
Leslie Fiedler quote on writing blurbs
My assignment is what every writer’s assignment is: tell the truth of his own time.
Leslie Fiedler quote on Tell the truth, writing
Sometimes I think my writing sounds like I walked out of the room and left the typewriter running.
Gene Fowler quote on Writing
Writing is easy: All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.
Gene Fowler quote on Writing
The reason a writer writes a book is to forget a book and the reason a reader reads one is to remember it.
Tom Wolfe | Writing, Book
Writing a novel is actually searching for victims. As I write I keep looking for casualties. The stories uncover the casualties.
John Irving | Writing a novel
Sometimes that’s a year, sometimes it’s 18 months, where all I’m doing is taking notes. I’m reconstructing the story from the back to the front so that I know where the front is.
John Irving | Taking notes, writing
The building of the architecture of a novel – the craft of it – is something I never tire of.
John Irving | Architecture of a novel
Know the story before you fall in love with your first sentence. If you don’t know the story before you begin the story, what kind of a storyteller are you? Just an ordinary kind, just a mediocre kind – making it up as you go along, like a common liar.
John Irving | Know the story
Half my life is an act of revision.
John Irving | Life, Writing
Books want to be born: I never make them. They come to me and insist on being written, and on being such and such.
Samuel Butler – Writing books
The only good histories are those that have been written by the persons themselves who commanded in the affairs whereof they write.
