Writing Quotes

"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 " "The ability of writers to imagine what is not the self, to familiarize the strange and mystify the familiar, is the test of their power" "Writing is a struggle against silence." "A writer's job is to give testimony, to bear witness to an age and the legacies of those who inhabit it." "This is the other secret that real artists know and wannabe writers don’t. When we sit down each day and do our work, power concentrates around us" "I like myself better when I'm writing regularly " "It is my aim, and every poet's, to have each work as a whole and each separate paragraph too, to be the whole story, with beginning, middle, climax, and end." "If a story is in you, it has to come out." "If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead and rotten either write things worth reading or do things worth writing" "Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand." "To produce a mighty book you must choose a mighty theme "