Simone de Beauvoir Quotes

Style is the thing that's always a bit phony, and at the same time you cannot write without style.

Hemingway sucks. If I set out to write that way, it would have been been hollow and lifeless because it wasn't me.

I write what I write in the way that I write it. I'm not being abstract, you know. I'm talking about something that, you know, is a part of my life.

I'm a firm believer in putting your experiences in your writing, of bleeding into the page.

I believe an editor's job is to help a writer sound like himself or herself.

A writer writes what he knows, in ways that are natural to him.

Not all women write the same. But I don't understand why the model is that you're supposed to write like a man, and that means you're a real writer.

Underneath all his writing there is the settled determination to use certain words, to take certain attitudes, to produce a certain atmosphere; what he is seeing or thinking or feeling has hardly any influence on the way he writes. The reader can reply, ironically, "That's what it means to have a style"; but few people have so much of one, or one so obdurate that you can say of it, "It is a style that no subject can change.

Since great writers communicate a vision of existence, one can't borrow their methods. The method is married to the vision.

If you write with passion in your own style, you will make a place for yourself

I think each writer has to seek her most energetic prose style. She has to find a way to write so that nobody can deny it.

Style is what's there when you look at someone's writing and you know that they wrote it and nobody else did.

If you write well, you don't have to dress funny.

Oftentimes an originator of new language forms is called 'pretentious' by jealous talents. But it ain’t whatcha write, it’s the way atcha write it.

Most writers write books that they wouldn't read. I ought to know; I've done it myself.

Good writing is often about letting go of fear and affectation. Affectation itself, beginning with the need to define some sorts of writing as 'good' and other sorts as 'bad' is fearful behavior.

I kinda write in sequences that I live through.

Over-certified adjectives are the mark of most best-seller writing

It's not knowing how to write that makes you interesting, it's what you write.

If you just write the kinds of stories you think others will want to read, you'll be competing with cartoonists who are far more enthusiastic for that kind of comic than you are, and they'll kick your ass every time.

I feel like women very often do write differently than men, but women write things that men can't write.

I always seem to write personal songs; that's always been my go-to thing, to write about what I'm experiencing.

With writing, I think you have to be honest with yourself. I have a certain kind of writing; that is, I like to really embellish the human spirit. You have to write about something you have a feel for.

I don't take notes; I don't outline, I don't do anything like that. I just flail away at the goddamn thing. I'm a salami writer. I try to write good salami, but salami is salami. You can't sell it as caviar.

You write to suit some sense in yourself and trust that that will resonate with a certain wider readership.