Quotes about Writing

All my books are very spiritual. I started out writing what was most natural to me, many years ago, which is religious, because I grew up in the jungle, the son of missionaries. I want to know, is God real? What's a priest's role?

Every sentence spoken by Napoleon, and every line of his writing, deserves reading, as it is the sense of France.

The proper definition of a man is an animal that writes letters.

There's nothing sacred about the book you've written. The Bible says there's safety in a multitude of counselors. The movie is the movie, and the book is the book. They're different critters, and each must stand on their own merits.

If a writer wrote merely for his time, I would have to break my pen and throw it away.

Graphomania (a mania for writing books) inevitably takes on epidemic proportions when a society develops to the point of creating three basic conditions: - (1) an elevated level of general well being which allows people to devote themselves to useless activities (2) a high degree of social atomization and , as a consequence, a general isolation of individuals; (3) the absence of dramatic social changes in the nation's internal life.

The novel is born not of the theoretical spirit but of the spirit of humor.

The invention of printing formerly enabled people to understand one another. In the era of universal graphomania, the writing of books has an opposite meaning: everyone surrounded by his own words as by a wall of mirrors, which allows no voice to filter in from the outside.

That conversation with the taxi driver suddenly made clear to me the essence of the writer's occupation. We write books because our children aren't interested in us. We address ourselves to an anonymous world because our wives plug their ears when we speak to them.

Looked at from the outside, I haven't experienced anything. Looked at from the outside! But I have a feeling that my experience inside is worth writing about and could be interesting to everybody.

I hate to write, but I love to have written.

You are going to love some of your characters because they are you or some facet of you, and you are going to hate some of your characters for the same reason.