Just do it. Get it down on the page. Work hard. And then let go. Ask yourself why you want to write. You have to be clear about that.
No man writes a book without meaning something, though he may not have the faculty of writing consequentially and expressing his meaning.
The writers who reject tendentiousness and purpose in their work are the very ones who display it in every word they write. I could draw countless examples from the history of literature to show that the more a writer clamours for spiritual freedom, the more tendentious his work is liable to be.
I considered calmly that I was born to write.
I didn't want to do a book just to do a book. I wanted to do a book that, if you should read it, you might take one thing from it. Until that was clear in my mind, I wasn't going to do one.
The very reason I write is so that I might not sleepwalk through my entire life.
I don't write books inadvertently.
One false word, one extra word, and somebody's thinking about how they have to buy paper towels at the store. Brevity is very important. If you're going to be longwinded, it should be for a purpose. Not just because you like your words.
I'm not a writer just to be a writer. I want to say something that really needs expressing.
There should really not be anything gratuitous in a work of art. Sometimes what seems as if it's gratuitous may be a passage in which a character is being characterized so that the reader comes to know him or her better.
Writers write to influence their readers, their preachers, their auditors, but always, at bottom, to be more themselves.
To me, there's no point in writing merely to entertain.
I am never going to write for the sake of writing.
I don't just write hits for myself, or for other artists, or to just be writing it. I write it because I was born to do this. I was given this gift, and I'm making the most of my opportunity.
The sermon which I write inquisitive of truth is good a year after, but that which is written because a sermon must be writ is musty the next day.
When I write something, every word of it is meant. I can't say it enough.
I want to offer a word of encouragement to authors: You have to feel called to the message of your book enough that you want people to get that message. When you get to that place, your passion goes through the roof, and then the other stuff happens.
Like when you have the right title for something you're writing and you get lost - you can always go back to the title and go, "Yeah, that's what this is about."
Writing should be useful. If it can’t instruct people a little bit more about the responsibilities of consciousness, there’s no point in doing it.
It is to be noted that when any part of this paper appears dull there is a design in it.
It sometimes is better to write in a more directed, focused way when the pages are aimed at something already, a mission statement or a basic spine that represents the theme or the concept that you've agreed on, and writing partners are great for that because you can sit there until you get it.
I can't write about nice, easy topics because that won't change the world. And I do want to change the world - one reader at a time.
The writer doesn’t write for the reader. He doesn’t write for himself, either. He writes to serve…something. Somethingness. The somethingness that is sheltered by the wings of nothingness — those exquisite, enveloping, protecting wings.
I've always written very tightly, and there's a good reason for that. There's no point in using words that you're not going to apply.
