A writer never has a vacation. For a writer life consists of either writing or thinking about writing.
- Eugene Ionesco
Category Archives: quotes
Not rocket science
If it has horses and swords in it, it’s a fantasy, unless it also has a rocketship in it, in which case it becomes science fiction. The only thing that’ll turn a story with a rocketship in it back into fantasy is the Holy Grail.
- Debra Doyle
Filed under quotes
Every great writer is a writer of history, let him treat on almost any subject he may.
~ Walter Savage Landor, Imaginary Conversation: Diogenes and Plato
Keep up
It begins with a character, usually, and once he stands up on his feet and begins to move, all I can do is trot along behind him with a paper and pencil trying to keep up long enough to put down what he says and does.
~ William Faulkner
[If only]
Monsters and gods
I try to create sympathy for my characters, then turn the monsters loose.
~ Stephen King
Sleepless
The process of writing has something infinite about it. Even though it is interrupted each night, it is one single notation.
~ Elias Canetti
Dish it up
The best time for planning a book is while you’re doing the dishes.
~ Agatha Christie
So it’s a good thing my dishwasher’s blown up, right?
Tripping
Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.
~ E. L. Doctorow
Inky cuffs
It seems to me that those songs that have been any good, I have nothing much to do with the writing of them. The words have just crawled down my sleeve and come out on the page.
~ Joan Baez
Filed under quotes
