"When I was young, I was very technical about these things. I didn't like to admit to any intimate relation with what I was writing."
Read quote
3 likes
Writing quotes
Writing
30.7K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Topics related to Writing
Browse quotes that often appear alongside writing — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Writing quotes (page 332 of 1537)
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"First rule of writing: When still a child, make sure you read a lot of books. Spend more time doing this than anything else."
Read quote
3 likes
"I have an ambition to write a great book, but that's really a competition with myself. I've noticed that a lot of young writers, people in all media, want to be famous but they don't really want to do anything. I can't think of anything less worth striving for than fame."
Read quote
3 likes
"I wouldn't write about people who are living and who are close to me, because I think it's a very violent thing to do to another person. And anytime I have done it, even in the disguise of fiction, the results have been horrific."
Read quote
3 likes
"I just realized quite early on that I'm not going to be the type who can write a novel every two years. I think you need to feel an urgency about the act. Otherwise, when you read it, you feel no urgency, either. So I don't write unless I really feel I need to, and that's a luxury."
Read quote
3 likes
"And it's just anathema to being a writer. It's not healthy. But in another way, when I'm writing, what it's about for me is being good on the page. None of that noise could change the way I feel about my writing. Which is not always particularly positive."
Read quote
3 likes
"Other people’s words are so important. And then without warning they stop being important, along with all those words of yours that their words prompted you to write. Much of the excitement of a new novel lies in the repudiation of the one written before. Other people’s words are the bridge you use to cross from where you were to wherever you’re going."
Read quote
3 likes
"A lot of [George Saunders] early stories now feel prophetic. Take the recent election [of Donald Trump]. Historians in 100 years might write about it as being the first internet election, in which what happened was actually an expression in the real world of a virtual reality. And you've been writing about that subject for a while."
Read quote
3 likes
"I'm a writer who never writes about sex. It's so far from my own fictional world."
Read quote
3 likes
"I'm always interested in the way people speak and move in their environment, in a very particular environment. I'm never interested in writing a kind of neutral, universal novel that could be set anywhere. To me, the any novel is a local thing always."
Read quote
3 likes
"Today, writing seems to me like an incredible luxury, almost a perversity, something which hardly exists in the world anymore, where you get to see the fruits of your actions in a daily way."
Read quote
3 likes
"I'm most honest about writing when I'm talking to family or friends, not to newspapers."
Read quote
3 likes
"Writing is my way of expressing - and thereby eliminating - all the various ways we can be wrong-headed."
Read quote
3 likes
"I gave up on America. I read the Times just to find out what they're thinking. I read blogs. I get most of my best information from people who are there, people who write independently. And there's actually very few of them."
Read quote
3 likes
"The secret to writing a screenplay is keeping your ass in the chair."
Read quote
3 likes
"writing = ass + chair"
Read quote
3 likes
"I actually think the subject of young divorce is pretty funny; I'd like to write a movie about it."
Read quote
3 likes
"I love the writing process. It's something that I'm interested in personally and something I always do on every movie."
Read quote
3 likes
"We had an ancient Russian acting coach at my drama school who said the worst offense you could commit was to let your subtext show. That is the point of acting, is to be saying one thing and not be allowed by society or your predicament to show what you're really feeling. In a way, I think that's why the therapy generation has killed script writing, because all you ever get is people going, "Hi, I'm feeling really angry right now.""
Read quote
3 likes
"I'm interested in the way that the language of labor has been suppressed in our culture, the way it has disappeared from our vocabulary and is never heard on stage. . . . I'm better at writing than I am at organizing [political action]. SLAUGHTER CITY is my small contribution. If it gives people a voice it is worth something. So often we forget what we are no longer hearing."
Read quote
3 likes