The Writer S Journey Quotes

If I could split myself into five people, I would still be behind on my writing schedule. I see now why James Patterson cloned himself so many times. ~ Peter James West

As a young child I wanted to be a writer because writers were rich and famous. They lounged around Singapore and Rangoon smoking opium in a yellow pongee silk suit. They sniffed cocaine in Mayfair and they penetrated forbidden swamps with a faithful native boy and lived in the native quarter of Tangier smoking hashish and languidly caressing a pet gazelle. ~ William S. Burroughs

Well, when you're an immigrant writer, or an immigrant, you're not always welcome to this country unless you're the right immigrant. If you have a Mexican accent, people look at you like, you know, where do you come from and why don't you go back to where you came from? So, even though I was born in the United States, I never felt at home in the United States. I never felt at home until I moved to the Southwest, where, you know, there's a mix of my culture with the U.S. culture, and that was why I lived in Texas for 25 years. ~ Sandra Cisneros

The story is the story is the story. ~ Heather O'Brien

Reading a newspaper is like reading someone's letters, as opposed to a biography or a history. The writer really does not know what will happen. A novelist needs to feel what that is like. ~ A.S. Byatt

One thing I knew about the novelist's task: when in doubt, write; when empty, write; when afraid, write. Nothing is more impenetrable than the blank page. The blank page is the void, the absence of sense and feeling, the white light of literary death. ~ Philip Sington

Henry Miller, Genet, Sade, Bataille are really important writers for me and I love them, but I feel often they don't love me, you know? I feel I always have to wrap my head around the way the girl is treated in the works, and the way the woman writer has been treated within their philosophies. I think of Kathy Acker's Blood and Guts in High School, where Janey Smith is in an S&M relationship with Jean Genet, who she follows around the deserts of Algeria, and he's horrible to her, and that's what I think of when I think of my relationship to those writers. I think you have to read the text, obviously, despite that.

You seem to be subverting Sade and Bataille's ideas of the whore, and Henry Miller – all of his cunt portraits, all of his horrors that he writes about – you're writing about it from an interiority and a subjectivity that we don't typically get with the 'whore' or the 'slut' or the sexual girl. ~ Kate Zambreno

If you become a writer you'll be trying to describe the ?Thing all your life: and lucky if, out of dozens of books, one or two sentences, just for a moment, come near to getting it across. ~ C.S. Lewis

I am a writer, a professional journalist with serious credentials in Crime, Craziness, and Politics. I have mingled with dangerous criminals and attended many trials ... from Hell's Angels, Black Panthers and Chicano street fighters to Roxanne Pulitzer and even Richard Nixon, back in the good old days before he was run out of the White House for fraud, perjury, graft, and criminal negligence. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

A writer's will is the winds of dead calm in the Western Lands. Point way out he can start stirring of the sail. Writer, where are you going? To write. Here we are in texts already written on the sky. Where he doesn't need to write anymore. A slight seismic with the cat book. Always remember, the work is the mainsail to reach the Western Lands. The texts sing. Everything is grass and bushes, a desert or a maze of texts. Here you are ... never use the same door twice. Sky in all directions ... on the word for word. The word for word is word. The western sail stirs candles on 1920 country club table. Each page is a door to everything is permitted. The fragile lifeboat between this and that. Your words are the sails. ~ William S. Burroughs

My advice for aspiring writers is simply this: NEVER GIVE UP. Do not let anyone tell you that you cannot achieve your dreams. If you want to be a writer, do it! Study hard to show that you have a passion for it. Read as many books as you possibly can. Attend workshops. Take classes that focus on English and writing skills. Research. Write everyday; even if it's on little napkins at restaurants. Every idea starts somewhere. Never let anyone steal your aspirations. You can do this. Just breathe and write. The rest will come to follow. ~ Rachel Nicole Wagner

The writers I care about most and never grow tired of are: Shakespeare, Swift, Fielding, Dickens, Charles Reade, Flaubert and, among modern writers, James Joyce, T. S. Eliot and D. H. Lawrence. But I believe the modern writer who has influenced me most is Somerset Maugham, whom I admire immensely for his power of telling a story straightforwardly and without frills. ~ George Orwell

All old stories, my cousin, will bear telling and telling again in different ways. What is required is to keep alive, to polish, the simple clean forms of the tale which must be there - in this case the angry Ocean, the terrible leap of the horse, the fall of Dahud from the crupper, the engulfment etc etc. And yet to add something of yours, of the writer, which makes all these things seem new and first seen, without having been appropriated for private or personal ends. ~ A.S. Byatt

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

88. People wonder why so many writers come to live in Paris. I've been living ten years in Paris and the answer seems simple to me: because it's the best place to pick ideas. Just like Italy, Spain.. or Iran are the best places to pick saffron. If you want to pick opium poppies you go to Burma or South-East Asia. And if you want to pick novel ideas, you go to Paris. ~ Roman Payne

One is made by all the things around one. There are many things that have made one. For a writer to go around looking for things that have made him is asking for trouble. It's like giving a character to yourself. Can't do it. Can't do it. These things are just there. Is that enough? ~ V.S. Naipaul

Don't let writers block push you around. Figure out what the problem is,whether it's with the ms or it's in your personal life, and face it head on. Don't stop writing. Just try really hard to work through it. ~ Darynda Jones

She looked at the empty page, which remained blank, apart from the small wet dots from her tears, for hours. Her mind was a turmoil of sadness, rage, fear and all those emotions that gave her inspiration. However her heart lacked the will as the empty words enclosed her soul pulling it down towards the frenzied ravenous imps that stalked hells pantry.... ~ Virginia Alison

When I was a child, an angel came to say,
A true friend is coming my warrior to sweep you away,
It won't be easy the path because it leads through hell,
But if you're faithful, it will be the greatest story to tell,
You will move God's daughters to a place of hope,
Your story will teach everyone there is nothing they can't cope,
You will suffer a lot, but not one tear will you waste,
Because for all that you do for me, you will be graced,
For I am bringing you someone that wants to travel your trail,
Someone you already met when you passed through heaven's veil,
A warrior, a friend that whispers your heart's song,
Someone that will run with you and pull your spirit along,
Don't you see the timing was love's fated throw,
Because I put you both there to help one another grow,
I am the writer of all great stories your chapters were written by me,
You suffered, you cried because I needed you to see,
That your faith in my ending goes far beyond two,
It was going to change more hearts than both of you knew,
So hush my child and wait for my loving hand,
The last chapter is not written and still in the sand,
It is up to you to finish, before the tide washes it away,
All that is in your heart, I've put there for you to say,
This is not about winning, loss or pain,
I made you the way you are because true love stories are insane,
I wrote you in heaven as I sat on its s ~ Shannon L. Alder

When you write, magic happens. Doors open. People smile and the world is a better place ~ Alan Dapre

I don't know if any single book made me want to write. C.S. Lewis was the first writer to make me aware that somebody was writing the book I was reading - these wonderful parenthetical asides to the reader. ~ Neil Gaiman

The old writer couldn't write anymore because he had reached the end of words, the end of what can be done with words. ~ William S. Burroughs

I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

A writer never forgets the first time he accepted a few coins or a word of praise in exchange for a story. He will never forget the sweet poison of vanity in his blood and the belief that, if he succeeds in not letting anyone discover his lack of talent, the dream of literature will provide him with a roof over his head, a hot meal at the end of the day, and what he covets the most: his name printed on a miserable piece of paper that surely will outlive him. A writer is condemned to remember that moment, because from then on he is doomed and his soul has a price. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon

In a mood of faith and hope my work goes on. A ream of fresh paper lies on my desk waiting for the next book. I am a writer and I take up my pen to write. ~ Pearl S. Buck

The only reason you can't write is because you don't. ~ A.A. Patawaran

God does not demand that every man attain to what is theoretically highest and best. It is better to be a good street sweeper than a bad writer, better to be a good bartender than a bad doctor, and the repentant thief who died with Jesus on Calvary was far more perfect than the holy ones who had Him nailed to the cross. And yet, abstractly speaking, what is more holy than the priesthood and less holy than the state of a criminal? The dying thief had, perhaps, disobeyed the will of God in many things: but in the most important event of his life he listened and obeyed. The Pharisees had kept the law to the letter and had spent their lives in the pursuit of a most scrupulous perfection. But they were so intent upon perfection as an abstraction that when God manifested His will and His perfection in a concrete and definite way they had no choice but to reject it. ~ Thomas Merton

A voice is a product of the writer's own Pandora Box of insight, insecurities, bravado, modesty, humility, affection, understanding, and confidence. In short, a voice reflects the writers' sangfroid. The tenor of the writer's voice also reflects their insecurities, self-doubt, egotism, testiness, and the ability to identify with their mental and physical infirmities. The inflection that distinguishes a writer's pitch from other wordsmiths' tone reflects their collective lifetime of mundane, tranquil, disturbing, and passionate experiences. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

He came down all the way to us, saved us by the death and resurrection of his Son, and continues to provide for our temporal and eternal welfare. But that's not all: After this he still accommodates, coming all the way down to us again here and now as he uses the most everyday and common elements that are familiar to both the uneducated and the academic: water, bread, and wine. Here God even accommodates to our weakness by allowing us to "taste and see that the Lord is good," to catch a glimpse of his goodness as he passes by. The writer to the Hebrews calls it tasting of "the powers of the coming age" (Heb. 6:5). Isn't it a bit arrogant, therefore, for us to respond to this gracious condescension by asking, "But what about the teenagers? How can we make the gospel relevant to people today? ~ Michael S. Horton

Writer's block is caused by forcing your will on the Divine. ~ Chriscinthia Blount

It is the highest reward when a writer hears when a book written in doubt and solitude, has reached a human heart with a deeper meaning than even the writer had been aware of, as she wrote. It is something extra, the unexpected return. ~ Pearl S. Buck

To unlock the writer's block is to keep writing until you can unknot the "not". If you cannot, then put a can in the plot and unwrap it a lot! ~ Ana Claudia Antunes

The Four Stages of Writer's Block
W.B. Stage I: I want to write but I can't.
W.B. Stage II: I have to write but I can't.
W.B. Stage I: I don't want to write but I have to.
W.B. Stage I: I don't have time for writing ... and, honestly, I don't feel like writing. ~ Katerina Stoykova Klemer

I assumed this yoke would encase me as well as any another hobble. Only this one bound the mind. ~ Jazz Feylynn

I am Orafoura, but you can call me Jarod Kintz. I'm fairly proud to proclaim that Dora J. Arod has me on her short list of "World's worst writers." The list couldn't get any shorter, because I'm the only name on it. I should tell her to stop calling it a list, and change the title to "World's worst writer." If you're wondering why I rate all my work one star, it's because the rating system doesn't have a zero star option, or better yet, go into negative numbers. ~ Orafoura

They told me I've got writer's cramp. So is that better than the block? ~ Joyce Rachelle

["Manning Up"'s] essays definitely nuance the idea of transitioning into a "shared manhood" (much like feminists of color have complicated the idea of "shared womanhood"). Trans men don't all transition to just become "men," which was one of the projects' cornerstone concepts. They become black men, white men, queer men, straight men, working class men, affluent men, fatherly men, single men, spiritual men, etc. etc. All of these mean different things when filtered through social and intimate, familial lenses.

One major boon of the growth in transgender literature ... is that we get to tease out these complexities in lives that will be popularly portrayed as monolithic unless we provide counter-scripts."

- from a National Book Critics Circle interview with writer Rigoberto Gonzalez ~ Mitch Kellaway

A doctor is not criticized for describing the manifestations and symptoms of an illness, even though the symptoms may be disgusting. I feel that a writer has the right to the same freedom In fact, I think that the time has come for the line between literature and science, a purely arbitrary line, to be erased. ~ William S. Burroughs

If I want to read S.J. Perelman's Chicken Inspector No. 23 for the third time instead of some anguished, politically correct saga of a girl growing up in a trailer park in Kingman, Arizona, with an alcoholic mother who makes her straighten her naturally curly hair and won't let her date a Navajo boy or pursue her goal of becoming (naturally) a writer, I will. And I will laugh like a lunatic while doing it. ~ Mel White