Life Writing Quotes

When you work on a book and you have planned everything out and you are putting flesh to an idea and a surmise that before was mainly bones something funny happens. Your brain goes into an altered state where the words you write are not quite the words you want but rather the words dictated by the task at hand. ~ David Amerland

When I write, I don't allow the fear of consequences to interfere with the writing process. I have in the past paid for my commitment to the truth and the way I live my life. I am prepared to pay more if I have to. ~ Taslima Nasrin

Collaborating on a film script involves two people sitting in a room separated by the silence of two minds working together. ~ Darlene Craviotto

Sometimes all you want to do is to keep on writing. ~ Avijeet Das

I wrote when I did not know life. Now that I know life, I have no more to write. ~ Oscar Wilde

The more you write fiction, the deeper you will dig, until you begin to understand pieces of your own life. ~ Alice Blanchard

I no longer know the author of this book, for simply stopping long enough and writing it down was where I changed from a boy with his eyes squeezed shut to a man with his eyes wide open so that the sunlight might reach my heart despite all that darkness. ~ Ryan Adams

Write what you want to write. That's the only advice a writer will ever need. ~ Chloe Thurlow

The secret to good writing is to use small words for big ideas, not to use big words for small ideas. ~ Oliver Markus Malloy

I'm a very lucky man. I get to do the thing I want most in life, write songs and sing them for people, and ride bikes. I love my family. I love my home. I get to work with people I've admired my whole life. It's a pretty good life. ~ Lyle Lovett

Concentrate on sharpening your memory and peeling your sensibility. Cut every page you write by at least one third. Stop constructing those piffling little similes of yours. Work out what it is you want to say. Then say it in the most direct and vigorous way you can. Eat meat. Drink blook. Give up your social life and don't think you can have friends. Rise in the quiet hours of the night and prick your fingertips and use the blood for ink; that will cure you of persiflage! ~ Hilary Mantel

Only my characters truly know what's going on - I just hold the pen. ~ Sandra J. Jackson

I am always writing music. I have got unlimited ideas because I have been clean and sober for my entire life. ~ Ted Nugent

Being a writer is 1% inspiration, 50% perspiration and 49% explaining you're not a millionaire like J.K.Rowling. ~ Gabrielle Tozer

The Page awaits the Inspiration even as Inspiration roams the world of man, seeking a Page upon which to unfurl itself, body and soul, bare yet clothed in immortality if not immediacy.
And the gods said, "Let there be a Page, and many a Page," and there was a Book. And we saw that the Book was good. ~ Chila Woychik

The kind of true-life writing that is fun to read - that makes an ally of the reader - is the kind that you are so nervous about putting down on paper that you lock the Word file with a secret password and encrypt it - and all of it. ~ Julie Klausner

A writer writes. There are no exceptions to this reality. No excuses. Stop wasting time talking about your stories and get them on paper. ~ Christy Hall

The writer, his eye on the finish line, never gave enough thought to how to run the race. ~ William Zinsser

As I worked to rebuild the ghost town I had made, I felt keenly that my failure to help Timothy was really only the latest chapter in a lifelong history of inadequacy and powerlessness. ~ Michael Chabon

Writing is about preserving things, life is about letting go. ~ Marty Rubin

You know you've spent a lot of time writing fiction when you meet a new person and instead of asking them about what they do, or where they're from, you ask "what's your backstory? ~ David Filmore

Beware of writing to me. I always answer ... My father spent the last 20 years of his life writing letters. If someone thanked him for a wedding present, he thanked them for thanking him and there was no end to the exchange but death. ~ Evelyn Waugh

The next thing most like living one's life over again seems to be a recollection of that life, and to make that recollection as durable as possible by putting it down in writing. ~ Benjamin Franklin

And so it was settled. Sam Gamgee married Rose Cotton in the spring of 1420 (which was also famous for its weddings), and they came and lived at Bag End. And if Sam thought himself lucky, Frodo knew that he was more lucky himself; for there was not a hobbit in the Shire that was looked after with such care. When the labours or repair had all been planned and set going he took to a quiet life, writing a good deal and going through all his notes. He resigned the office of Deputy Mayor at the Free Fair that Midsummer, and dear old Will Whitfoot had another seven years of presiding at Banquets. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

Gordon eyed them with inert hatred. At this moment he hated all books, and novels most of all. Horrible to think of all that soggy, half-baked trash massed together in one place. ~ George Orwell

Your personal writing can heal, grow, and transform your life. Give your words permission to change you. ~ Sandra Marinella

Remember that time slurs over everything, let all deeds fade, blurs all writings and kills all memories. Exempt are only those which dig into the hearts of men by love. ~ Aristotle.

A person frequently writes in order to escape madness and crushing despondency by culling moral lesson and healing growth serum from personal experiences. Akin to riders on a storm, and a dog without a bone, we only come to understand our limits by enduring suffering. Only by deliberately confronting the essential facts of life does a person come to understand humanity. Without suffering the full brunt of love, sorrow, pain, illness, death, and accepting the relentless march of time a person never comes to know anything at all regarding the wonderful mystery of life. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

The final advantage is the same that applies in every other competitive venture. If you would like to write better than everyone else, you have to want to write better than everyone else. You must take an obsessive pride in the smallest details of your craft. And you must be willing to defend what you've written against the various middlemen--editors, agents, and publishers--whose sights may be different from yours, whose standards are not as high. Too many writers are browbeaten into settling for less than their best. ~ William Zinsser

Life takes its own turns, makes its own demands, writes its own story, and along the way, we start to realize we are not the author. ~ Barack Obama

As a writer, the main skill you need is curiosity. As a reader, the main tool you need is open-mindedness. ~ Gloria D. Gonsalves

Not a wasted word. This has been a main point to my literary thinking all my life. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

It's a difficult path that we tread, us Indie self-publishers, but we're not alone. How many bands practicing in their dad's garage have heard of a group from the neighbourhood who got signed by a recording company? Or how many artists who love to paint, but are not really getting anywhere with it hear of someone they went to art school with being offered an exhibition in a gallery? How many chefs who love to get creative around food hear of someone else who's just landed a job with Marco Pierre White?
There's no difference between us and them. There is, however, a huge difference in how everyone else perceives the writer. And there's a huge difference between all of us – the writers, the musicians, the composers, the chefs, the dance choreographers and to a certain extent the tradesmen - and the rest of society in that no one understands us. It's a wretched dream to hope that our creativity gets recognised while our family thinks we're wasting our time when the lawn needs mowing, the deck needs painting and the bedroom needs decorating.
It's acceptable to go into the garage to tinker about with a motorbike, but it's a waste of a good Sunday afternoon if you go into the garage and practice your guitar, or sit in your study attempting to capture words that have been floating around your brain forever. ~ Karl Wiggins

You rely too much on brain. The brain is the most overrated organ. ~ Woody Allen

I write what I feel, fiction with a twist of truth. I don't write because I want to, I write because I have to. ~ Jack Tate

A piece of writing is a dangerous thing," he said. "It can change your life. ~ Tobias Wolff

Stories were primarily verbal to begin with. Before there were cave paintings, stories were told over generations. We tell each other thousands of stories in the course of everyday life. ~ David Massengill

I am so territorial, that [from the start] I just felt like whatever I was gonna do I was gonna write it myself, its my personal preference to always be in control of everything I do in life. ~ Nicki Minaj

When all is said and done, I hope people will judge me by who I am, not by what I've written. ~ Jack Tate

Writing, I think, is not apart from living. Writing is a kind of double living. The writer experiences everything twice. Once in reality and once in that mirror which waits always before or behind. ~ Catherine Drinker Bowen

I think I have grown wise enough
To not to wish to climb up the stairs
'M gonna sit, walk, crawl, swing by on the step I am
And let the upper ones have their stare ~ Mansi Laus Deo

You don't write because someone sets assignments! You write because you need to write, or because you hope someone will listen or because writing will mend something broken inside you or bring something back to life. ~ Joanne Harris

Poems must, of course, be written in emotional freedom. Moreover, poems are not language but the content of the language. ~ Mary Oliver

Grab a pen and your turf will have no limits. ~ Nadun Lokuliyanage

Write a true, careless, slovenly impulsive, honest diary every day of your life. ~ Brenda Ueland

A dream is like a first draft.
No one will ever see it but you. ~ T.N. Suarez

I never thought I'd write, because I'd never written anything in my whole life. ~ Linda Ronstadt

It's a really, really scary thing to stand here, to put words in people's mouths to say to God. It's terrifying to me. You potentially could mess someone up for...I don't know, eternity. ~ David Crowder

I didn't kill myself
when things went wrong
I didn't turn
to drugs or teaching
I tried to sleep
but when I couldn't sleep
I learned to write
I learned to write
what might be read
on nights like this
by one like me ~ Leonard Cohen

Writing is part of life, but it is not part of the ordinary busyness of life. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

A novel must give a sense of permanence as well as a sense of life. ~ E. M. Forster

When writing a book what is more important? Grammar and spelling or telling a great story? I know which I would choose. ~ Samuel Colbran

I don't write for a living. I live to write. ~ Marwa Ayad

The last chapter in 'Alice in Worcestershire' is called 'Writing the book'.
I started to write that 'Diary' chapter at the very beginning of the process and followed it through to the end... speaking to the reader.

My decision to do this was because I've often read autobiographies and wondered how the author felt and how it impacted them writing about painful memories that had been locked away in a deep forgotten place.
I wanted to know what was going in their 'present' life while they were writing; about the struggle with sharing their inner secrets and... I'm... inquisitive. (nosy)!

It took me over five years to finish 'Alice in Worcestershire' because sometimes, I was simply too drained to continue. Periodically, I updated the 'Diary' chapter and, thankfully, it's enthusiastically appreciated by readers. ~ Eskay Teel

I would willingly pass my life writing and re-writing the same book - that one book every writer carries within him - the image of his own soul. ~ Ignazio Silone

Writing is like a religion to those who don't practise, an act of faith for those who do. ~ Chloe Thurlow

Writing is not a profession, occupation or job; it is not a way of life: it is a comprehensive response to life. ~ Gregory McDonald

To turn life into words is to make life yours to do with as you please, instead of the other way round ~ Gore Vidal

A writer's tools are desperation, humiliation, loneliness, love, affection, heartache, happiness, glee, defeat, victory, setbacks, and a desire for personal redemption. People with the experience to know of such things relate that in order to write one must suffer an alleyway of anguish, and experience an array of physical and emotional pain. More than anything else, emotional growth, and writing are each reflective of the immeasurable gain accomplished through studious reflection. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Research is a wonderful word for writers. It serves as excuse for EVERYTHING ~ Rayne Hall

I think the best thing about being a writer is getting to dream. It's constantly viewing life through the "what if?" lens. ~ Kevin J. Fitzgerald

No I try and set my books in lots of different locales. Variety is the spice of life! ~ Cathy Williams

The divine thoughts comes from God, we are only vessel for its transmission. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

He cut away the insignificant and incidental. Those bits were tossed
away from the juicy core pieces. He slid the excess tissue and tendons away and reorganized the good bits on his plate. Those pieces were translated into words and catchy phrases and assembled like a new life. ~ Jeffry R. Halverson

..here's the editor's prescription, writer: 1000 words daily until next checkup. ~ Rob Bignell, Editor

You do not immortalize the lost by writing about them. Language buries, but does not resurrect. ~ John Green

Writing is not apart from living. Writing is a kind of double living. ~ Catherine Drinker Bowen

I'm a writer. Life is supposed to pass me by, while I watch it. ~ Nick Hornby

Like other kinds of intelligence, the storyteller's is partly
natural, partly trained. It is composed of several qualities, most
of which, in normal people, are signs of either immaturity or
incivility: wit (a tendency to make irreverent connections);
obstinacy and a tendency toward churlishness (a refusal to
believe what all sensible people know is true); childishness (an
apparent lack of mental focus and serious life purpose, a fondness
for daydreaming and telling pointless lies, a lack of proper
respect, mischievousness, an unseemly propensity for crying
over nothing); a marked tendency toward oral or anal fixation
or both (the oral manifested by excessive eating, drinking,
smoking, and chattering; the anal by nervous cleanliness and
neatness coupled with a weird fascination with dirty jokes);
remarkable powers of eidetic recall, or visual memory (a usual
feature of early adolescence and mental retardation); a strange
admixture of shameless playfulness and embarrassing earnestness,
the latter often heightened by irrationally intense feelings
for or against religion; patience like a cat's; a criminal streak of
cunning; psychological instability; recklessness, impulsiveness,
and improvidence; and finally, an inexplicable and incurable
addiction to stories, written or oral, bad or good. ~ John Gardner

All my writing has been an effort to sort out the paradoxes of my life. ~ Nancy Friday

Here's one prophecy the writer can make - you'll never be rich and you'll probably be poor. ~ Chloe Thurlow

Finally I had made that necessary imaginative leap - which is a real necessity, since most of us writers can't be out there living like crazy all the time. These days, very few are the writers whose book jackets list things like bush pilot, big game hunter, or exotic dancer. No, more often we are English teachers. We have children, we have mortgages, we have bills to pay. So we have to stop writing strictly about what we know, which is what they always told us to do in creative writing classes. Instead, we have to write about what we can learn, and what we can imagine, and thus we come to experience that great pleasure Anne Tyler noted when somebody asked her why she writes, and she answered, I write because I want more than one life. ~ Lee Smith

You have to digest life. You have to chew it up and love it all through. ~ Paula McLain

Anything you want to do is possible; fear is not meant to prevent but to motivate your heart into the life you naturally think is improbable ~ Craig Stone

Life - No, I've nothing to teach you about it for the moment. May be writing about it another week. ~ E. M. Forster

Manuscript rejections might tempt you to quit writing or querying.
Don't. ~ T.N. Suarez

Writing sharpens life; life enriches writing. ~ Sylvia Plath

Very early on, near the beginning of my writing life, I came to believe that I had to seize on some object outside of literature. Writing as a sylistic exercise seemed barren to me. Poetry as the art of the word made me yawn. I also understood that I couldn't sustain myself very long on the poems of others. I had to go out from myself and literature, look around in the world and lay hold of other spheres of reality. ~ Zbigniew Herbert

I write, because not breathing is not an option. ~ Monice Mitchell Simms

Writing starts with living. ~ L.L. Barkat

I read the novel I had been writing for several months with an odd sense that it was the work of a stranger. I usually work in the dead hours of night and surprising the manuscript mid-morning revealed the flaws and excesses it was trying to conceal. ~ Chloe Thurlow

I believe that, for those who love to write, time spent writing is never wasted. And then isn't it from book to book that we approach the book that we really want to write? ~ Elena Ferrante

Stop it now and take control. Write this on a card and pin it up where you can see it ... MY THOUGHTS CONTROL MY LIFE! ~ Peter A. Cohen

In reading we live hundreds lives, in writing we live thousands of lives. ~ R.M. Donaldson

It is with a kind of fear that I begin to write the history of my life. ~ Helen Keller

Everything in life is a story just waiting to be written. ~ M.G. Marsh

It's a strange irony that most people who are truly creative don't really know where their ideas come from. To be a writer, just like all crafts, is an art form. You can take evening classes in writing at the local library, where you go along every Tuesday night and read out your weekly piece, and that can serve to improve your expertise a little, but to be a Wrong Planet writer you have to first of all be an artist. The art of searching for words radiates from deep inside the writer, and I truly feel that when a true writer is sitting quietly at his desk his movements are beautifully interwoven. His breathing will even come with an effortless grace. The ability to move fluidly in his study in this manner begins with a truly intuitive knowledge, although if the truth were known, there's a little bit of insanity in the writer that does everyone an awful lot of good. ~ Karl Wiggins

Imagination, curiosity, passion, creativity these are the words that move me! ~ Samuel Colbran

What we're doing in writing is not all that different from what we've been doing all our lives, i.e., using our personalities as a way of coping with life. Writing is about charm, about finding and accessing and honing ones' particular charms. To say that "a light goes on" is not quite right - it's more like: a fixture gets installed. Only many years later ... will the light go on. ~ George Saunders

No art ever came out of not risking your neck. ~ Eudora Welty

I think if you want to make a recipe for making a writer, have them feel a little out of place everywhere, have them be an observer kind of all the time. ~ Lin-Manuel Miranda

And here I am, instead of there. I'm sitting in this library, thousands of miles from my life, writing another letter I know I won't be able to send, no matter how hard I try and how much I want to. How did that boy making love behind that shed become this man writing this letter at this table? ~ Jonathan Safran Foer

Writing isn't about making money, getting famous, or making friends. It's about doing what you love the best you know how. It's about making a heart pound in fear, shrink from rage, weep with understanding, or soar with excitement. It's about making worlds and living in them deeply enough someone else can join you there. It's about life changed to words, words changed to life, over and over and over again. It's about giving. ~ Billie Sue Mosiman

As soon as you start writing, even if it is under your real name, you start to function as somebody slightly different, as a "writer". You establish from yourself to yourself continuities and a level of coherence which is not quite the same as your real life ... All this ends up constituting a kind of neo-identity which is not identical to your identity as a citizen or your social identity, Besides you know this very well, since you want to protect your private life. ~ Michel Foucault

Process is nothing; erase your tracks. The path is not the work. I hope your tracks have grown over; I hope birds ate the crumbs; I hope you will toss it all and not look back. ~ Annie Dillard

Of course the play as I wrote it amounted to nothing; but in weaving the plot through successive scenes, and in writing out some of the dialogues, I enjoyed the full bliss of literary creation. Never to have tasted this delight is never to have known one of the greatest joys of life. ~ Carl Schurz

This was the time when all we could talk about was sentences, sentences - nothing else stirred us. Whatever happened in those days, whatever befell our regard, Clea and I couldn't rest until it had been converted into what we told ourselves were astonishingly unprecedented and charming sentences:
"Esther's cleavage is something to be noticed" or "You can't have a contemporary prison without contemporary furniture" or "I envision an art which will make criticism itself seem like a cognitive symptom, one which its sufferers define to themselves as taste but is in fact nothing of the sort" or "I said I want my eggs scrambled not destroyed."
At the explosion of such a sequence from our green young lips, we'd rashly scribble it on the wall of our apartment with a filthy wax pencil, or type it twenty-five times on the same sheet of paper and then photocopy the paper twenty-five times and then slice each page into twenty-five slices on the paper cutter in the photocopy shop and then scatter the resultant six hundred and twenty-five slips of paper throughout the streets of our city, fortunes without cookies. ~ Jonathan Lethem

Writing is making sense of life. ~ Nadine Gordimer

Only the hand that erases can write the true thing. ~ Meister Eckhart

Because.
Everything
worth anything
takes time. ~ Christy Hall