“Es tan corto el amor, y es tan largo el olvido.”
—Neruda
April 2012
15 posts
“Also, I mustn’t use jargon. You are surrounded by jargon — in the newspapers, in friends’ conversations — and as a writer, you can become very lazy. You can start using words lazily. I don’t want that to happen. Words are valuable. I like to use them in a valuable way.”
—V.S. Naipaul
V.S. Naipul: The Art of Fiction
Interviewer: You started writing A House of Mr. Biswas just as your first novel was published.
Naipul: Yes. I was casting around in a desperate way for a subject. It was so despairing that I actually began to write with a pencil — I didn’t feel secure enough.
“It is immensely hard to be the first to write about anything. It is always easy afterwards to copy.”
—V.S. Naipaul
Maya Angelou: The Art of Fiction
Interviewer: What is the best part of writing for you?
Angelou: Well, I could say the end. But when the language lends itself to me, when it comes and submits, when it surrenders and says, I am yours, darling — that’s the best part.
“I know that one of the great arts that the writer develops is the art of saying, No. No, I’m finished. Bye. And leaving it alone. I will not write it into the ground. I will not write the life out of it. I won’t do that.”
—Maya Angelou
“A writer should concern himself with whatever absorbs his fancy, stirs his heart, and unlimbers his typewriter.”
—E.B.White
“I am apt to let something simmer for a while in my mind before trying to put it into words. I walk around, straightening pictures on the wall, rugs on the floor — as though not until everything in the world was lined up and perfectly true could anybody reasonably expect me to set a word down on paper.”
—E.B.White
“Delay is natural to a writer. He is like a surfer — he bides his time, waits for the perfect wave on which to ride in. Delay is instinctive with him. He waits for the surge (of emotion? of strength? of courage?) that will carry him along. I have no warm-up exercises, other than to take an occasional drink.”
—E.B. White
“A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word on paper.”
—E.B. White
“I don’t like being indoors and get out every chance I get. In order to read, one must sit down, usually indoor. I am restless and would rather sail a boat than crack a book. I’ve never had a very lively literary curiosity and it has sometimes seemed to me that I am not really a literary fellow at all. Except that I write for a living.”
—E.B. White
“If writers had to wait until their precious psyches were completely serene there wouldn’t be much writing done.”
—William Styron
“Let’s face it, writing is hell.”
—William Styron
“Tonight I can write the saddest lines.”
—Pablo Neruda
“Nothing about me wants to write. I reject it like a transplanted organ. It’s a little bit of a dark window into my soul. I don’t mind writing scripts. I don’t mind writing something that I’m going to read, because I think subconsciously, I’m confident that if I screw something up, or something is inelegant or embarrassing or even wrong, because I’m writing myself, I can ad-lib the correction on-air or fix it. When you’re writing for the eye, it’s unforgiving, and I find it hard for me to commit to a sentence.”
—Rachel Maddow
