The best thing about writing fiction is that moment where the story catches fire and comes to life on the page, and suddenly it all makes sense and you know what its about and why you’re doing it and what these people are saying and doing, and you get to feel like both the creator and the audience. Everything is suddenly both obvious and surprising … and it’s magic and wonderful and strange.
– Neil Gaiman
Tag: writing
Quotable 425
Writing doesn’t get easier with time; every novel is a first novel.
– John le Carré
Quotable 422
Be yourself and your readers will follow you anywhere. Try to commit an act of writing and they will jump overboard to get away.
– William Zinsser
Quotable 420
Writing is not just what happens at a desk. It happens everywhere and always, whenever your mind encounters a thought it wants to wrap words around.
– Kevin Coyne
Quotable 410
There’s a joy in writing short stories, a wonderful sense of reward when you pull certain things off.
– Tobias Wolff
Quotable 402
Writing, along with fire-making and the invention of the wheel, is widely held to be a milestone of human progress. This view will seem naïve to anybody who has read much human writing. … The true wellspring of civilization isn’t writing; it is editing.
– Nathan Heller
Quotable 401
I think that being a novelist means you defend human values by writing novels.
– Alaa Al Aswany
Quotable 396
Maybe the hardest thing in writing is simply to tell the truth about things as we see them.
– John Steinbeck
Quotable 393
Remember that no one can take writing away from you. You don’t need permission. When you’re ready to write, consider that impulse to be permission granted.
– Sonia Taitz
Quotable 386
Writing can be hell. If that doesn’t deter you, then keep at it.
– Steph Post