Writing Quotes

"I am, in large measure, the selfsame prose I write. " "Because, if one is writing novels today, fieldwork is more and more a lost art. Take all the time you need, sit down with people, and dig deep. Galaxies may be infinitesimal, but no detail is too small." "This is how you do it: you sit down at the keyboard and you put one word after another until it’s done. It’s that easy, and that hard." "So the writer who breeds more words than he needs is making a chore for the reader who reads" "It is not possible to build on negative emotions. Genuine literature will come only when we replace hatred for man with love for him" "Write a short story every week. It's not possible to write 52 bad short stories in a row." "You write in order to change the world ... if you alter, even by a millimeter, the way people look at reality, then you can change it." "It is healthier, in any case, to write for the adults one’s children will become than for the children one’s “mature” critics often are." "The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world and he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true" "Writing is a dog’s life but the only life worth living" "The hardest thing is to sit down and write. What keeps us from sitting down is Resistance." "Keep a diary, and someday it’ll keep you." "I would like to be remembered as a thoughtful writer" "The hardest thing about writing is writing" "There's no such thing as a perfect book" "The only reason for the existence of a novel is that it does attempt to represent life." "The only obligation to which in advance we may hold a novel without incurring the accusation of being arbitrary is that it be interesting." "The only difference between screwing around and science is writing it down" "All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town." "Peace goes into the making of a poet as flour goes into the making of bread "