1,024 Quotes About Writing-process

The fastest way to revise a piece of work is to send it, late at night, to someone whose opinion you fear. Then rewrite it, praying you'll finish in time to send a new version by morning.

The "if I had time" lie is a convenient way to ignore the fact that novels require being written and that writing happens a sentence at a time. Sentences can happen in a moment. Enough stolen moments, enough stolen sentences, and a novel is born - without the luxury of time.

Prose, in his experience, calls for many more words than poetry. There is no point in embarking on prose if one lacks confidence that one will be alive the next day to carry on with the task.

the truer the words. the truer the feeling in the reader.

Sometimes writing can take you to such dark places it can be nearly impossible to come back from; a part of you is left there, in the words you've bled onto paper, in the emotions you've let loose upon the page, and eventually, the world.

Pulling pomes from a hat seems to be the easiest way to write.

Pulling poems and quotes from a hat seems to be the easiest way to write.

Change biology, and you could change society--but could you change society on its own? Were we as a species simply condemned to permanent misery, all because of how we have evolved?This was the conundrum that the Oankali books had posed to her, and the Parables had been intended (but failed) to solve: How do you create a more sustainable, more benign, more livable society when you're stuck working with human beings?

Poets want to stay home and write, wearing the same shoes and forgetting to eat.