Authors & Writing Quotes

Browse through our collection of quotes tagged with Authors & Writing.

Songwriting is about getting the demon out of me. It's like

Songwriting is about getting the demon out of me. It's like being possessed. You try to go to sleep, but the song won't let you. So you have to get up and make it into something, and then you're allowed to sleep. It's always in the middle of the night, or you're half-awake or tired, when your critical faculties are switched off. So letting go is what the whole game is. Every time you try to put your finger on it, it slips away. You turn on the lights and the cockroaches run away. You can never grasp them...

Authors & Writing

The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading, in

The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading, in order to write; a man will turn over half a library to make one book.

Authors & Writing

I cringe when critics say I'm a master of the popular novel.

I cringe when critics say I'm a master of the popular novel. What's an unpopular novel?

Authors & Writing

The writer may very well serve a movement of history as its

The writer may very well serve a movement of history as its mouthpiece, but he cannot of course create it.

Authors & Writing

Every writer creates his own precursors. His work modifies o

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

Jorge Luis Borges

Authors & Writing

Like all writers, he measured the achievements of others by

Like all writers, he measured the achievements of others by what they had accomplished, asking of them that they measure him by what he envisaged or planned.

Jorge Luis Borges

Authors & Writing

The traditional novel form continues to enlarge our experien

The traditional novel form continues to enlarge our experience in those very areas where the wide-angle lens and the Cinema screen tend to narrow it.

Daniel J. Boorstin

Authors & Writing

The walls are the publishers of the poor.

The walls are the publishers of the poor.

Eduardo Galeano

Authors & Writing

The ambivalence of writing is such that it can be considered

The ambivalence of writing is such that it can be considered both an act and an interpretive process that follows after an act with which it cannot coincide. As such, it both affirms and denies its own nature.

Authors & Writing

The writer's language is to some degree the product of his o

The writer's language is to some degree the product of his own action; he is both the historian and the agent of his own language.

Authors & Writing

There is but one art, to omit.

There is but one art, to omit.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Authors & Writing

What is a novel if not a conviction of our fellow-men's exis

What is a novel if not a conviction of our fellow-men's existence strong enough to take upon itself a form of imagined life clearer than reality and whose accumulated verisimilitude of selected episodes puts to shame the pride of documentary history?

Authors & Writing

When writers meet they are truculent, indifferent, or over-p

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.

Authors & Writing

A great writer creates a world of his own and his readers ar

A great writer creates a world of his own and his readers are proud to live in it. A lesser writer may entice them in for a moment, but soon he will watch them filing out.

Authors & Writing

The more books we read, the clearer it becomes that the true

The more books we read, the clearer it becomes that the true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece and that no other task is of any consequence.

Authors & Writing

There is something else which has the power to awaken us to

There is something else which has the power to awaken us to the truth. It is the works of writers of genius. They give us, in the guise of fiction, something equivalent to the actual density of the real, that density which life offers us every day but which we are unable to grasp because we are amusing ourselves with lies.

Authors & Writing

The last thing we decide in writing a book is what to put fi

The last thing we decide in writing a book is what to put first.

Authors & Writing

I have made this letter a rather long one, only because I di

I have made this letter a rather long one, only because I didn't have the leisure to make it shorter.

Authors & Writing

If I had more time I would write a shorter letter.

If I had more time I would write a shorter letter.

Authors & Writing

Writing is like getting married. One should never commit one

Writing is like getting married. One should never commit oneself until one is amazed at one's luck.

Authors & Writing