I consider myself kind of a reporter - one who uses words that are more like music and that have a choreography. I never think of myself as a poet; I just get up and write.
I try to keep my sentences quite pared back. What I really want to do is observe people's relationships and interactions. I don't want language to get in the way of that. It's quite a difficult process to achieve that, for the language to feel clear.
A lot of critics think I'm stupid because my sentences are so simple and my method is so direct: they think these are defects. No. The point is to write as much as you know as quickly as possible.
If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. A writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing.
USAGE, n. The First Person of the literary Trinity, the Second and Third being Custom and Conventionality. Imbued with a decent reverence for this Holy Triad an industrious writer may hope to produce books that will live as long as the fashion.
My first serious attempts at writing were made in 1868, and I took up two very different lines of composition; I wrote some short stories of a very flimsy type, and also a work of a much more ambitious character, 'The Lives of the Black Letter Saints.'
Because I write very simply, but inside the simplicity, there's a lot of subtlety. That's what I'm proud of.
I write what I write.
You know, as a writer, I'm more of a listener than a writer, cuz if I hear something I will write it down.
I never had a highfalutin' view of what I write.
I don't really do themes. I might accidentally, but themes are an emergent phenomena of the writing of the book, of just trying to get a story out there.
I'm not a writer. I know a lot of writers; I know a handful of really excellent, great ones, and I know what they're like. They are in love with language. They're obsessed with it. Even if their thoughts aren't more special than anybody else's, they have a way of putting them into words that makes them sensational.
My heroes were never scientists. They were Graham Greene and Christopher Isherwood, you know, good writers.
When I teach writing, I have a mantra: 'Be a first-rate version of yourself, and not a second-rate version of another writer.'
I think that I've just kind of found my niche, if that makes sense. I still write the same, but I feel like I've found what separates me, and I always try to stay in that when I write. It took me a long time to discover that, so I try to be protective.
I'd like to take a course in writing. I'm not the best writer in the world. I'd like to write more neatly, even though people don't send many handwritten letters these days.
I'm a very slow screenwriter. It takes time for me to write a screenplay. Also, I feel it's not my strength.
Ball points belong to their age. They make everyone write alike.
When I am writing fiction, I believe I am much better organized, more methodical - one has to be when writing a novel. Writing poetry is a state of free float.
There is no motivation higher than being a good writer.
I've always loved Jane Austen's writing.
When people write comedy from neutrality, it just gets kind of silly.
A sports writer is a stylist of some kind. He is trying to convey mood and character and emotion.
I prefer writing originals.
The thing is, with writing, it's form or content. You need to write about something interesting or you need to write about it in an interesting way.
