Quotes about Writing

Every weekday morning, I picture my first paragraph while I hike with my dog Milo near Mulholland Drive, looking out over the San Fernando Valley. I edit the paragraph, then memorize it, so that when I get back home and sit down at my computer, the blank screen's tyranny lasts only a second or two. A brief reign!

What began the change was the very writing itself. Let no one lightly set about such a work. Memory, once waked, will play the tyrant.

Summer is a discouraging time to work - you don't feel death coming on the way it does in the fall when the boys really put pen to paper.

I don't think I ever owned twenty pencils at one time. Wearing down seven number-two pencils is a good day's work.

Whatever I'm writing comes organically out of my life.

When I am writing fiction, I believe I am much better organized, more methodical - one has to be when writing a novel. Writing poetry is a state of free float.

Someone once asked Somerset Maughham if he wrote on a schedule or only when struck by inspiration. "I write only when inspiration strikes," he replied. "Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o'clock sharp.

I don't know why I started writing. I don't know why anybody does it. Maybe they're bored, or failures at something else.

As arts, grammar and logic are concerned with language in relation to thought and thought in relation to language. That is why skill in both reading and writing is gained through these arts.

Some writers have excellent "control"; they know exactly what they want to convey, and they convey it precisely and accurately

You will also find authors who do not know the difference between theory and practice, just as there are novelists who do not know the difference between fiction and sociology.

Dean's eyes were studying me. You have a way with words. What kind of writing do you want to do? Articles for Dad's paper, to start. What do you want to write about? I paused, suddenly uncertain about how much to share. Dean's eyes were reassuring. When I know more, I'd like to write about deeper things.