1,068 Quotes About Writers-on-writing

Novel writing, I’ve discovered, is the most liberating. You can write the narrative in the past, present, or future, and from virtually any viewpoint or philosophy, including your own. The only keeper you answer to is your own creativity. It’s total autonomy.

Struggle for your art. Die for your art. But you can never give up on your art!

Art is not just a display of beauty. Art also reflects what is ugly, and it celebrates the grotesque. An artist frequently creates what we describe as beautiful by depicting what is at first glance unpleasing, peculiar, or abnormal and casting the unpleasant, strange, or outlandish images into a more agreeable light that reaches deeper truths.

I write things down because my thoughts get too heavy in my head and it hurts my neck.

Art must take reality by surprise.

You can never be an artist if your work comes without effort. That is the problem with modern ink from a bottle. You do not have to think. You simply write what is swimming on the top of your brain. And the top is nothing but pond scum, dead leaves, and mosquito spawn. But when you push an inkstick along an inkstone, you take the first step to cleansing your mind and your heart. You push and you ask yourself, What are my intentions? What is my heart that matches my mind?

Storytelling creates a healing serum. The thematic unguent of our personal story represents a fusion of the ineffable truths that each of us must discover within ourselves.

We use the tools of memory and imagination to construct and depict stories; they make up the double-sided face of the same mental coin. Memory houses many images. The ability mentally to depict and store images depends upon the power of association prompted by the rational and imaginative thoughts of the mind. Recollection of past thoughts is dependent upon the quality of our memory system. The Ancient Greeks taught us, memory is the mother of our personal muse.

Both memory and imagination arrest time. By conjoining memory and imagination in forming storytelling’s language, style, and texture, writers’ negate the mind’s march into forgetfulness. We employ the full sprung use of memory and imagination to blunt our descent into nothingness.