132 Quotes About Writers-and-writing

Every writer ''creates'' his own precursors. His work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify the future.

To write is to make oneself the echo of what cannot cease speaking -- and since it cannot, in order to become its echo I have, in a way, to silence it. I bring to this incessant speech the decisiveness, the authority of my own silence.

Not only my imagination, but my life inspires my stories. All of my stories have a little bit of me in them.

When writers meet they are truculent, indifferent, or over-polite. Then comes the inevitable moment. A shows B that he has read something of B s. Will B show A? If not, then A hates B, if yes, then all is well. The only other way for writers to meet is to share a quick pee over a common lamp-post.

We regard this as information that Intel behaved deceptively.

You were saying that once when visiting Yale, you were struck that unlike Pound, Williams's thinking was volatile, I mean, did not stay locked into a pattern of concepts that then defined his subsequent necessary behavior, whereas Pound did.

One of the problems with that is that author's lives and works in general don't always correlate,

Writing is turning one's worst moments into money.

The writer isn't made in a vacuum. Writers are witnesses. The reason we need writers is because we need witnesses to this terrifying century.