Erica Jong Quotes

Fiction writing feels more honest to me.

There is a fine line I have to walk throughout the writing process in a novel. It is this line between drama and melodrama, and it is this line between evoking genuine emotional power and being manipulative.

When you're trying to paint a portrait of a very specific world, you're trying to show what makes the world different. So, sometimes it means exaggerating certain kind of aspects, but I don't think it's that important or it's that much of an issue as long as you get an emotional truth across.

If you're a writer, you know there are ways in which we don't know what we're doing at all. We're working out mysteries in a sort of poetic realm, and hoping that if a story is honest, if you're dragging the deep truth out of yourself, then something good and profound might come out of it.

All stories are true,” Skarpi said. “But this one really happened, if that’s what you mean.” He took another slow drink, then smiled again, his bright eyes dancing. “More or less. You have to be a bit of a liar to tell a story the right way. Too much truth confuses the facts. Too much honesty makes you sound insincere.

I've been told by people who write historical novels that you just sort of write the emotional truth first, the story at the core, and then you go back and research it at the end.

I am sure it has been done with less, but you should be prepared to write and throw away a million words of finished material. By finished, I mean completed, done, ready to submit, and written as well as you know how at the time you wrote it. You may be ashamed of it later, but that's another story.

One can be absolutely truthful and sincere even though admittedly the most outrageous liar. Fiction and invention are of the very fabric of life.

I love rewriting because that is where and how you discover the story. It's like you have this skeleton, and you get to put flesh on it and hair and clothes and really wonderful jewelry.

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

I'm not sure I have the physical strength to undertake a novel.

I used to think it was hard to write, and I still find the process more or less unpleasant, but if I know what I'm doing it rattles along, then the rewrite whips it into shape rather quickly.

I'm working with published authors and some very young undergraduates and lots of people in between. They are lovely people, and they can write.

You have to have heart's passion to write a novel.

You become a great writer by writing.

When I first started writing, I wrote a book called 'Bruiser,' and it was pretty much set in Chicago.

My assignment is what every writer's assignment is: tell the truth of his own time.

I write. This is what I do. My job is to sit down with my vocabulary, select words, and decide what order they should be placed in an attempt to keep someone's attention and perhaps provide them with a laugh or two along the way.

For a creative writer possession of the 'truth' is less important than emotional sincerity.

I like writing books. I really love words. I love to read.

Making a book is a craft, like making a clock; it needs more than native wit to be an author.

I must write the book out in my head now, before I sit down.

I write novels and other things.

Stephen King has inspired me with his humor and honesty, and his admonition that the author's job is to tell the truth.

Reading taught me how to write.