Writing as a Craft Quotes

I'm writing what comes into my head, or through me, or from somewhere else, and it is the most extraordinary, exciting thing. I love it, and I'm very greedy, and I really enjoy it!

I just think of myself as a writer. Yes, I'm a woman. And I'm a writer. The main challenge is that I like to write stories about young women, and society doesn't place much of a premium on young women's stories. And I think that's why I gravitate towards it. I really honor that, and I treasure that time, and they should be given that respect.

When I was younger, I wondered if it was possible to be a good person and a writer.

Writing is so entwined with my being that I can't imagine a life without it.

Writing is like a sport. If you don't practice, you don't get any better.

I knew I wanted to be a writer before I knew that being a writer was possible.

A key to my thinking has always been the almost fanatical belief that what I was engaged in was a literary art form. That belief was compounded out of ego and necessity, I guess, a combination of the two.

I started out life as a writer, and writers write in part because they don't want to talk.

Writing is showbusiness for shy people. That's how I see it.

No, I don't harbor any mystical ideas about writing, Your Honor, it's work like any other kind of craft; the power of literature, I've always thought, lies in how willful the act of making it is.

Writing is what I do. It's like breathing to me at a certain point, but if I couldn't write, I do like cooking.

If you asked someone, 'Can you play the violin?' and he says, 'I don't know, I have not tried, perhaps I can,' you laugh at him. Whereas about writing, people always say: 'I don't know, I have not tried,' as though one had only to try and one would become a writer.

I knew I loved writing, and I was raised by people who love books.

I don't write for publishers, certainly not for critics, and not for readers, But I am delighted that so many people have found my books enjoyable and want to continue to read them.

I write for myself - but it is nice when other people like it, too!

I can't write. I would love to. I don't really have an interest in it, to be honest. I'll leave that to my fiance.

If you're writing, you're starting in private. It can really be this amazing, private, freeing experience. Forget that it's for other people - that comes in later.

As a writer, I am constantly aware that I take my life in my hands with everything I do and say. It's just a fact of life. For me it always has been.

I just want to be a free writer. I think I am serving my country and my people by providing an independent narrative.

I have always thought of myself as a writer, only because I need things to direct, and I can't not write the things that I direct.

A writer writes. Period. No matter if someone is buying your work or not.

The pretentiousness of literature really annoys me; the way a writer is held as this sort of magical person to be revered on the stage. Everything I do on tour is to try and destroy that pretense.

Writing itself is a bad enough trade, rightly held up to ridicule and contempt by the greater part of mankind, and especially by those who do real work, plowing, riding, sailing

I wrote poems. That is my work. I am convinced... I believe that what I wrote will be useful to people not only now but in future generations.

Life can't defeat a writer who is in love with writing, for life itself is a writer's lover until death.