Gail Carson Levine Quotes

Writing is a subtle art that is reached mostly by self-discovery and experimentation.

I’m a writer, and everything I write is both a confession and a struggle to understand things about myself and this world in which I live. This is what everyone’s work should be-whether you dance or paint or sing. It is a confession, a baring of your soul, your faults, those things you simply cannot or will not understand or accept. You stumble forward, confused, and you share. If you’re lucky, you learn something.

Writing is the act of discovery.

One poem or story doesn't matter one way or the other. It's the process of writing and life that matters.

Writing has got to be an act of discovery....I write to find out what I'm thinking about.

...there are two kinds of writing: the one you write and the one that writes you.

I'm trying to get in the habit of, you know, picking up a book and learning how to write my feelings down, not my feelings but my thoughts, about things, and hopefully I'll moving toward the writing and directing thing soon.

The reason I write is that I'm not in dialogue with my emotions; writing puts me in touch with myself.

I write about my feelings, things that happen in my life and experiences.

The positive thing about writing is that you connect with yourself in the deepest way. You get a chance to know who you are, to know what you think. You begin to have a relationship with your mind.

In the writing, I'm just trying to go deeper, emotionally, and learn more about myself and reveal more and find a way to connect with people in new ways.

So why do I write, torturing myself to put it down? Because in spite of myself I've learned some things. Without the possibility of action, all knowledge comes to one labeled "file and forget," and I can neither file nor forget. Nor will certain ideas forget me; they keep filing away at my lethargy, my complacency. Why should I be the one to dream this nightmare?

I don't write for catharsis; I have to write to understand.

Ultimately, writing is about trusting your own mind. It is an act of discovery.

Writing, for me, means humility. It’s a process that involves fear and doubt, especially if you’re writing honestly.

If you are disappearing from yourself, but you're still writing, then there is a kind of activity of thinking going on, which in my world is similar to what's going on in music.

Writing is a process of discovery of what you really do know. You can't limit yourself in advance to what you know, because you don't know everything you know.

I'm still getting to the good part / the breaking down / learning how to write my story.

I didn't write because I had anything to say, but in order to find out what there was to say.

I write to give myself strength. I write to be the characters that I am not. I write to explore all the things I'm afraid of.

You have to surrender to your mediocrity, and just write. Because it's hard, really hard, to write even a crappy book. But it's better to write a book that kind of sucks rather than no book at all, as you wait around to magically become Faulkner. No one is going to write your book for you and you can't write anybody's book but your own.

I, myself, write to change my life, to make it come out the way I want it to. But other people write for other reasons: to see more closely what it is they are thinking about, what they may be afraid of. Sometimes writers write to solve a problem, to answer their own question. All these reasons are good reasons. And that is the most important thing I'll ever tell you. Maybe it is the most important thing you'll ever hear. Ever.

Writing does not exclude the full life; it demands it.

A story is a letter that the author writes to himself, to tell himself things that he would be unable to discover otherwise.

Writing becomes a really good creative outlet when you're sitting there and feeling creatively frustrated or stilted, but also you then get to write parts for yourself.