Citaten over schrijven

Gewoon hard werken, daar gaat het om.

Gaan zitten en zo nauwkeurig mogelijk formuleren.

H. Haasse

Alleen als het nep is,

dan kan het, hè oma?

Merlijn, 3 jaar

Er is altijd één plek in m'n hersens

die pijn gaat doen

als ik lang zit te dichten,

dat is dus gewoon de dichtknobbel,

denk je niet?

Annie M.G. Schmidt

Wit is voor een schrijver

wat stilte is voor een musicus.

Jan Brokken

Wantrouw elke drijfveer tot schrijven,

behalve de vreugde van het formuleren.

Godfried Bomans

Als we het over stijl hebben, hebben we het dus niet over de verbale handigheid van de schrijver maar over communicatie. Het gaat niet om de expressie van de schrijver maar over de onontkoombare impressie die het verhaal op de lezer zal maken.

Renate Dorrestein

The skill of writing is to provide a context
in which other people can think.

**

As a writer,

words are your paint.

Use all the colors.

Rhys Alexander

Whether or not you write well,

write bravely.

Bill Stout

Writing well means never having to say,

'I guess you had to be there.'

Jef Mallett

The role of a writer

is not to say what we all can say,

but what we are unable to say.

Anaïs Nin

Sometimes a flat-footed sentence
is what serves,

so you don’t get all writerly:

'He opened the door.'

There, it’s open.

Amy Hempel

Don’t get it right,

just get it written.

James Thurber

Write about what you know and care deeply about. When one puts one’s self on paper — that is what is called good writing.

Joel Chandler Harris

Good writers are those who keep the language efficient.

That is to say, keep it accurate, keep it clear.

Ezra Pound

Start early and work hard. A writer’s apprenticeship usually involves writing a million words (which are then discarded) before he’s almost ready to begin. That takes a while.

David Eddings

Writing is the only thing that,

when I do it, I don’t feel

I should be doing something else.

Gloria Steinem

Writing is the best way to talk
without being interrupted.

Jules Renard

The wastebasket
is a writer’s best friend.

Isaac Bashevis Singer

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
as those who move easiest have learned to dance.

Alexander Pope

Writing is easy:

All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper

until drops of blood form on your forehead.

Gene Fowler

We write to taste life twice,

in the moment and in retrospection.

Anaïs Nin

I have been correcting the proofs of my poems. In the morning, after hard work, I took a comma out of one sentence. In the afternoon I put it back again.

Oscar Wilde

I just sit at a typewriter
and curse a bit.

P.G. Wodehouse

Anybody can make history.

Only a great man can write it.

Oscar Wilde

Substitute 'damn' every time you’re inclined to write 'very;' your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.

Mark Twain

If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead, either write things worth reading or do things worth writing.

Benjamin Franklin

We writers dream of a future where actors are mostly computer generated and their performances can be adjusted, by us, on a laptop, alone.

Tina Fey

Anyone can become a writer.

The trick is staying a writer.

Harlan Ellison

A synonym is a word you use

when you can’t spell the other one.

Baltasar Gracián

Writing is a socially acceptable
form of schizophrenia.

E. L. Doctorow

If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live,
I wouldn’t brood. I’d type a little faster.

Isaac Asimov

I write when I’m inspired,
and I see to it that I'm inspired to write
at 9 o’clock every morning.

Peter De Vries

Wanting to meet an author because you like his work
is like wanting to meet a duck because you like paté.

Margaret Atwood



You must stay drunk on writing
so reality cannot destroy you.

Ray Bradbury

Words are a form of action,
capable of influencing change.

Ingrid Bengis

The first chapter sells the book.
The last chapter sells the next book.

Mickey Spillane

Stories may well be lies,
but they are good lies that say true things,
and which can sometimes pay the rent.

Neil Gaiman

Writing is utter solitude,
the descent into the cold abyss of oneself.

Franz Kafka

I love being a writer.
What I can't stand is the paperwork.

Peter DeVries

I have made this letter longer,
because I have not had the time
to make it shorter.

Blaise Pascal

There's nothing to writing.
All you do is sit down at a typewriter
and open a vein.

Walter Wellesley Smith

All my best thoughts
were stolen by the ancients.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Words are the most
powerful drug used by mankind.

Rudyard Kipling

Fill your paper
with the breathings of your heart.

William Wordsworth

I write because I don’t know what I think
until I read what I say.

Mary Flannery O’Connor

The person, be it gentleman or lady,
who has not pleasure in a good novel,
must be intolerably stupid.

Jane Austen

Authors like cats
because they are such quiet, lovable, wise creatures,
and cats like authors for the same reasons.

Robertson Davies

Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don't see any.

Orson Scott Card

You must keep sending work out; you must never let a manuscript do nothing but eat its head off in a drawer. You send that work out again and again, while you're working on another one. If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success—but only if you persist.

Isaac Asimov

I love writing.
I love the swirl and swing of words
as they tangle with human emotions.

James Michener

Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero;
but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

G.K. Chesterton

We are a species that needs and wants to understand who we are. Sheep lice do not seem to share this longing, which is one reason why they write so little.

Anne Lamott

Writing is a process in which we discover what lives in us. The writing itself reveals what is alive. The deepest satisfaction of writing is precisely that it opens up new spaces within us of which we were not aware before we started to write. To write is to embark on a journey whose final destination we do not know.

Henri Nouwen