Writing Life Quotes - Page 3

• Nearly everything seems a letdown after a writer has finished writing something.

  John Irving

  Writing, Scary, Letdowns

  John Irving (1978). “The world according to Garp”, Pocket

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• My writing life is pretty simple - I try to work every day, almost always in the mornings - and I can only write fiction effectively for about three or at the most four hours. No big mysteries, I just sit down and try to advance the cause a little bit every day.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Morning, Writing, Simple

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• In the reading and writing life, delight, for me, is where the mystery lies. Easy enough to figure out how scenes of violence or tragedy or titillation or grossness or even sentimentality can move us, but how the written word elicits delight - what Nabokov calls that shiver in the spine - is much harder to calculate and define.

  Alice McDermott

  Lying, Reading, Moving

  Source: www.commonwealmagazine.org

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• There's been no nepotism in my acting artistic life, but I think it's been pretty clear in my writing life. I knew what a pantoum was at age 11 - I knew form - therefore I would win the poetry contest. But I also realized that I would never be a great writer.

  Aya Cash

  Writing, Thinking, Winning

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Harvard meant a lot in my writing life from the beginning, even though I didnt actually do much composition on the spot.

  Seamus Heaney

  Writing, Harvard, Spots

  Source: harvardmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• when I talk about a writing life, I'm talking about a life in which writing is the dominant response to living.

  Julia Cameron

  Writing, Talking, Response

  "Becoming Intimate With Your Own Creative Impulses". Interview with Brad Crawford, www.writersdigest.com. March 11, 2008.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• In terms of people that I know, my grandmother and my mother are huge influences on my writing life because they are both massively supportive and always have been of my career.

  Tea Obreht

  Mother, Writing, Careers

  4 Copy quote

• Over the years, I've found that I either live life or write about it. I can't seem to do both simultaneously - I have to do it sequentially. When I write incessantly, I lose touch with the issues and passions that fuel the work. But when I get too involved in organizations or movement endeavors, I almost forget that I'm a writer. It's a constant struggle to find a balance between these two worlds - the solitary writing life and the life of a social justice activist.

  Letty Cottin Pogrebin

  Struggle, Live Life, Passion

  4 Copy quote

• Dogs and other animals - goats, donkeys, cows, a grumpy rooster - continue to change my writing life.

  Jon Katz

  Dog, Writing, Animal

  5 Copy quote

• I think all of my writing life led up to the writing of 'The Train Driver' because it deals with my own inherited blindness and guilt and all of what being a white South African in South Africa during those apartheid years meant.

  Athol Fugard

  Writing, Thinking, White

  11 Copy quote

• You know that this vignette and that vignette belong side by side, you know that a certain turn of phrase you've been saving will probably work best within a given section of the narrative. As in a jazz performance, writing lives or dies by what's produced in that moment. But that moment is attended by long preparation.

  Teju Cole

  Writing, Long, Preparation

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• I've always felt that my relationship to the United States is analogous to a marriage. I love this country. I hate it. I get angry at it. I feel close to it. I'm charmed by it. I'm repelled by it. And it's a marriage that's gone on for let's say at least 50 years of my writing life, and in the course of that, what's happened? It's gotten worse. It's not what it used to be.

  Norman Mailer

  Country, Hate, Writing

  "Mailer Tells a Lot. Not All, but a Lot.; His Longest Love Affair Is With the U.S." by Bernard Weinraub, www.nytimes.com. October 4, 2000.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• My mother had died when I wrote my first book. I was twenty-seven, so it was right at the beginning of my writing life. I don't know if she had lived, if I would have done it, certainly not quite like I did. But, you can't rethink it. You wrote what you wrote, it meant something to other people, and that's your good.

  Anne Roiphe

  Mother, Book, Writing

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• When I was growing up, I had no idea that I could possibly become a writer. I wrote endlessly in journals - a practice I maintained for a long time, well into the writing life I had no idea I could ever have.

  Dani Shapiro

  Growing Up, Writing, Practice

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• All my writing-life people kept telling me that I should stop writing short stories and start writing novels: my agent, my Israeli publisher, my foreign ones, my bank manager - they all felt and keep feeling that I'm doing something wrong here.

  Etgar Keret

  Writing, People, Feelings

  "Suddenly: An Interview With Etgar Keret". Interview with Courtney Becks, www.raintaxi.com. Summer 2012.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I've changed over my writing life. If I can generalize, I would say that the more recent poems - believe it or not - are more pointedly political; although, if the earlier poems were more existential, they were still political; though, in their own way, had a complicated presence.

  Gerald Stern

  Believe, Writing, Political

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Persistence is worth at least as much as talent. The writing life is not a series of gentle encouragements. It's more like a series of brutal kicks in the teeth. Those who grow a thick enough skin to persevere, survive. Those who do not, do not.

  Gardner Dozois

  Encouragement, Writing, Persistence

  4 Copy quote

• One of the things that I love about being a writer is this. I wake up every day and I write for three hours. I wake up early. So like 6:00, 7:00 in the morning, I write till 9:00 or 10:00. I live in New York, nobody even is breathing until 9:00 or 10:00 in the morning. So, it's like my writing life is completely removed from the rest of my life.

  Walter Mosley

  Morning, New York, Writing

  Big Think Interview with Andrew Dermont, bigthink.com. November 10, 2010.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I do believe that one's writing life needs to be kept separate from Po-Biz. Personally, I deal with this by not attending too many poetry readings, primarily reading dead poets or poems in translation, reading Poets & Writers only once for grant/contest information before I quickly dispose of it, and not reading Poetry Daily. Ever.

  Cate Marvin

  Believe, Reading, Writing

  Source: www.redividerjournal.org

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• You honor your writing space by recovering, if you are an addict. You honor your writing space by becoming an anxiety expert, a real pro at mindfulness and personal calming. You honor your writing space by affirming that you matter, that your writing life matters, and that your current writing project matters. You honor your writing space by entering it with this mantra: “I am ready to work.” You enter, grow quiet, and vanish into your writing.

  Eric Maisel

  Real, Writing, Space

  4 Copy quote

• I wont deny that I have a far more productive writing life without the Internet, mostly because I rekindle my ability to concentrate on one thing for a period of longer than three minutes. My curiosity is channeled inward rather than Internet-ward.

  Heidi Julavits

  Writing, Curiosity, Three

  6 Copy quote

• One of the most productive times in my early writing life was while I had a full-time job as a word processor in a law firm and also worked part-time at night, often working until 11:00 P.M.

  John Lescroart

  Jobs, Writing, Night

  4 Copy quote

• I'm amazed at how much my writing is improved when I step away from the computer, even in small amounts. If I'm stuck, I vacuum the living room or walk the dog. I'm amazed at what comes out of that... We have to realize that part of the writing life where we're sitting down at the computer is harvesting the crops, but you have to have planted them and watered them and created fertile soil - and that's a life.

  Donald Miller

  Dog, Writing, Sitting

  4 Copy quote

• Pivotal to a happy writing life is a practice of daily personal writing.

  Julia Cameron

  Writing, Practice, Life Is

  "Becoming Intimate With Your Own Creative Impulses". Interview with Brad Crawford, www.writersdigest.com. March 11, 2008.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• For me, the writing life doesn't just happen when I sit at the writing desk. It is a life lived with a centering principle, and mine is this: that I will pay close attention to this world I find myself in. 'My heart keeps open house,' was the way the poet Theodore Roethke put it in a poem. And rendering in language what one sees through the opened windows and doors of that house is a way of bearing witness to the mystery of what it is to be alive in this world.

  Julia Alvarez

  Writing, Heart, Doors

  60 Copy quote