Ever since I have declared to my heart that I am a writer, the path of ups and downs had started.
One day I feel like I am flying in Heaven and the next day the Abyss is opening up in front of me. I could choose to jump or fly over it but… somehow; I wound up wanting to explore the Abyss also. I mean… how can I write about flying if I do not know what is below the flying state?
I find this path to be so fascinating and I suddenly find myself in a new world that I do not want to leave anymore. Now, not only do I not want to leave it but all of a sudden, I discovered that I want to extract myself from all other worlds I belonged to up to now.
Why? Because… simply because… I love to write.
And… I love writers. I love to read what they write, I love to know what they think, I love to feel what they feel.
I also love to know what they are saying about writing and what they are conveying between the lines.
Below are 13 of my favorite writers.
Enjoy their words!
Paulo Coelho
“Writing means sharing. It’s part of the human condition to want to share things – thoughts, ideas, opinions.”
“I wanted to write when I was young, but people said it was impossible. Then my parents locked me in a mental institution – they said I was crazy and would never make a living from writing.”
“I am not a self-help writer. I am a self-problem writer. When people read my books, I provoke some things. I cannot justify my work. I do my work; it is up to them to classify it, to judge.”
Steven Wright
“I’m writing a book. I’ve got the page numbers done”.
“If you tell a joke in the forest, but nobody laughs, was it a joke?”
“I’m writing an unauthorized autobiography.”
A.B. Yehoshua
“The most difficult and complicated part of the writing process is the beginning.”
“Intimate relationships are a gold mine for literature to explore, to understand, to describe.”
“Traveling is one expression of the desire to cross boundaries.”
E. L. Doctorow
“Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader – not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.”
“Planning to write is not writing. Outlining, researching, talking to people about what you’re doing, none of that is writing. Writing is writing.”
“The historian will tell you what happened. The novelist will tell you what it felt like.”
Robert Frost
“I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew. Writing a poem is discovering.”
“Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.”
“A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.”
W. Somerset Maugham
“Habits in writing as in life are only useful if they are broken as soon as they cease to be advantageous.”
“The artist produces for the liberation of his soul. It is his nature to create as it is the nature of water to run down the hill.”
“There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.”
Horace
“Good sense is both the first principal and the parent source of good writing.”
“The pen is the tongue of the mind.”
“Wisdom is not wisdom when it is derived from books alone.”
Lisa Gardner
“We’re all in this together – when one writer succeeds, all writers succeed. I love discovering new authors. I think we need to take care of each other and talk about craft and nurture talent.”
“When you’re on book tours, you definitely need chocolate. At all times.”
“I think one of the appeals of suspense is to safely explore our innermost fears.”
Graham Greene
“Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation.”
“The great advantage of being a writer is that you can spy on people. You’re there, listening to every word, but part of you is observing. Everything is useful to a writer, you see – every scrap, even the longest and most boring of luncheon parties.”
Media is just a word that has come to mean bad journalism.
Ernest Hemingway
“If a writer knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one ninth of it being above water.”
“I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.”
“When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.”
Margaret Atwood
“The answers you get from literature depend on the questions you pose.”
“You will always have partial points of view, and you’ll always have the story behind the story that hasn’t come out yet. And any form of journalism you’re involved with is going to be up against a biased viewpoint and partial knowledge.”
“You need a certain amount of nerve to be a writer.”
Gustave Flaubert
“The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.”
“All one’s inventions are true, you can be sure of that. Poetry is as exact a science as geometry.”
“Writing is a dog’s life, but the only life worth living.”
Stephenie Meyer
“I always write things that entertain me, and one of the things that I find really enjoyable to explore is the idea of love. I like looking at my own life and my friends and family and how love changes who you are. It fascinates me.”
“All I can guess is that when I write, I forget that it’s not real. I’m living the story, and I think people can read that sincerity about the characters. They are real to me while I’m writing them, and I think that makes them real to the readers as well.”
“It’s easier to come up with new stories than it is to finish the ones you already have. I think every author would feel that way.”
