John Edgar Wideman Quotes

Books and drafts mean something quite different for different thinkers. One collects in a book the lights he was able to steal and carry home swiftly out of the rays of some insight that suddenly dawned on him, while another thinker offers us nothing but shadows - images in black and grey of what had built up in his soul the day before.

Writing a book is incredibly pleasurable, but very solitary. You have total control, but sometimes that can drive you insane.

A book, while it is being written, has an intense life of its own which you share.

To write a book is for all the world like humming a song.

Writers are really people who write books not because they are poor, but because they are dissatisfied with the books which they could buy but do not like.

I never exactly made a book. It's rather like taking dictation. I was given things to say.

A friend of mine who writes history books said to me that he thought that the two creatures most to be pitied were the spider and the novelist - their lives hanging by a thread spun out of their own guts. But in some ways I think writers of fiction are the creatures most to be envied, because who else besides the spider is allowed to take that fragile thread and weave it into a pattern? What a gift of grace to be able to take the chaos from within and from it to create some semblance of order.

Write your goddamned book now. The world awaits.

It is said, no man can write but one book; and if a man have a defect, it is apt to leave its impression on all his performances.

You can't be a writer if you don't write, it's just that simple.

Writing a book is the most terrifying thing that I've ever done. It's so much harder than writing for television because it is a completely different skill set.

It's not my brain that's writing the book, it's these hands of mine.

I've never actually even contemplated writing a book or having a book.

Don't be 'a writer'. Be writing.

Of all the ways of acquiring books, writing them oneself is regarded as the most praiseworthy method.

To write a book is for all the world like humming a song—be but in tune with yourself, madam, 'tis no matter how high or how low you take it.

Writing a book is like torture that you don't know, but after it's done and there it is. It's a joy like unlike anything else, I think it's the closest that a man can come to knowing what is feels like to have a baby.

If you're writing, you're a writer. If you're talking about it or thinking about it, I'm not so sure. Writing is ninety-eight percent work and two percent magic.

For me,the greater part of writing is daydreaming, dreaming the dream of my story until it hatches out-the writing down of it I always find hard.But I love finishing it,then holding the book in my hand and sharing my dream with my readers.

Am I allowed to ask my book / whether it's true I wrote it?

Books are like tweets, except longer.

That's all you have to ask from yourself writing a book. That it's the best you can do and that you did it without any ego involved and that you did it for somebody else. That's the best you can do.

There are men that will make you books, and turn them loose into the world, with as much dispatch as they would do a dish of fritters.

Books are great for if you want to work on the craft of writing for yourself, or, you know, to write novels or indie films, stuff like that.

There's still a fascination with somebody who can write at book length, no matter what the book is.