Creative-process Quotes

Sometimes I get the start of a story from a memory, an anecdote, but that gets lost and is usually u...

A story is not like a road to follow … it's more like a house. You go inside and stay there for a wh...

Everyone lies about writing. They lie about how easy it is or how hard it was. They perpetuate a rom...

Every story has already been told. Once you've read Anna Karenina, Bleak House, The Sound and the Fu...

Every story has already been told. Once you've read Anna Karenina, Bleak House, The Sound and the Fu...

When describing nature, a writer should seize upon small details, arranging them so that the reader ...

When describing nature, a writer should seize upon small details, arranging them so that the reader ...

In displaying the psychology of your characters, minute particulars are essential. God save us from ...

The last thing one discovers in composing a work is what to put first.

In writing. Don't use adjectives which merely tell us how you want us to feel about the thing you ar...

We are, not metaphorically but in very truth, a Divine work of art, something that God is making, an...

Actually, writers have no business writing about their own works. They either wax conceited, saying ...

I like what I do. Some writers have said in print that they hated writing and it was just a chore an...

I never had any doubts about my abilities. I knew I could write. I just had to figure out how to eat...

Creative work is often driven by pain. It may be that if you don't have something in the back of you...

Creative work is often driven by pain. It may be that if you don't have something in the back of you...

I never had any doubts about my abilities. I knew I could write. I just had to figure out how to eat...

The characteristic common to God and man is apparently that: the desire and the ability to make thin...

That a work of creation struggles and insistently demands to be brought into being is a fact that no...

[O]ne can scarcely be frightened off writing what one wants to write for fear an obscure reviewer sh...

The one thing which seems to me quite impossible is to take into consideration the kind of book one ...

[N]othing about a book is so unmistakable and so irreplaceable as the stamp of the cultured mind. I ...

we may say that History develops, Art stands still

Expansion. That is the idea the novelist must cling to. Not completion. Not rounding off, but openin...

I've had to keep defining and defending myself as a writer every single day of my adult life -- cons...

My most important piece of advice to all you would-be writers: When you write, try to leave out all ...

All writing problems are psychological problems. Blocks usually stem from the fear of being judged. ...

Find what gave you emotion; what the action was that gave you excitement. Then write it down making ...

There is seven-eights of it under water for every part that shows. Anything you know you can elimina...

This tremendous world I have inside of me. How to free myself, and this world, without tearing mysel...

One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.

So much in writing depends on the superficiality of one's days. One may be preoccupied with shopping...

A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to loo...

My life will be the best illustration of all my work.

If the artist does not fling himself, without reflecting, into his work, as Curtis flung himself int...

Don’t dash off a six-thousand-word story before breakfast. Don’t write too much. Concentrate your sw...

I don't know exactly where ideas come from, but when I'm working well ideas just appear. I've heard ...

Everyone lives in two worlds,” Maggie said, speaking in an absentminded sort of way while she studie...

Everyone lives in two worlds,” Maggie said, speaking in an absentminded sort of way while she studie...

Because, as we all know, it’s easier to do trivial things that are urgent than it is to do important...

Writing is something you do alone. Its a profession for introverts who want to tell you a story but ...

Writing is something you do alone. Its a profession for introverts who want to tell you a story but ...

When I face the desolate impossibility of writing five hundred pages, a sick sense of failure falls ...

Those who speak in spiritual terms routinely refer to God as creator but seldom see "creator" as the...

The "if I had time" lie is a convenient way to ignore the fact that novels require being written and...

The trick to finding writing time is to make writing time in the life you've already got.

I just needed time alone with my own thoughtsGot treasures in my mind but couldn’t open up my own va...

The mind I love most must have wild places, a tangled orchard where dark damsons drop in the heavy g...

One of the dumbest things you were ever taught was to write what you know. Because what you know is ...

One of the dumbest things you were ever taught was to write what you know. Because what you know is ...

Science fiction invites the writer to grandly explore alternative worlds and pose questions about me...

Every few weeks she would shut herself up in her room, put on her scribbling suit, and "fall into a ...

If we allow our "high creativity" to remain alive, we will never be bored. We can pray, standing in ...

The discipline of creation, be it to paint, compose, write, is an effort towards wholeness.

I force myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste.

It's very important to write things down instantly, or you can lose the way you were thinking out a ...

The very first thing I remember in my early childhood is a flame, a blue flame jumping off a gas sto...

After passionately nursing this idea for about an hour, I suddenly had another idea: no I wouldn't. ...

Sometimes life is hard. Things go wrong—in life and in love and in business and in friendship and in...

The one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vis...

The one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vis...

The irritating question they ask us -- us being writers -- is: "Where do you get your ideas?"

People talk about books that write themselves, and it's a lie. Books don't write themselves. It take...

The irritating question they ask us -- us being writers -- is: "Where do you get your i

All that night he thought like boomerangs fly: an idea would shoot way off into the distance, all th...

Years and years ago, I read a great interview with Jam and Lewis, the R&B producers, in which they d...

Learn to write by doing it. Read widely and wisely. Increase your word power. Find your own individu...

[A]lways get to the dialogue as soon as possible. I always feel the thing to go for is speed. Nothin...

[T]he success of every novel -- if it's a novel of action -- depends on the high spots. The thing to...

[T]he success of every novel -- if it's a novel of action -- depends on the high spots. The thing to...

For the fact is that disorder is the condition of the mind's fertility: it contains the mind's promi...

Any man who keeps working is not a failure. He may not be a great writer, but if he applies the old-...

Every morning I jump out of bed and step on a landmine. The landmine is me. After the explosion, I s...

The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as...

She was strangely unaware that she could look and see freshly for herself, as she wrote, without pri...

When I write, I fall into the zone many writers, painters, musicians, athletes, and craftsmen of all...

Go for broke. Always try and do too much. Dispense with safety nets. Take a deep breath before you b...

Forget ideas, Mr. Author. What kind of pen do you use?

The writer must have a good imagination to begin with, but the imagination has to be muscular, which...

The writer must have a good imagination to begin with, but the imagination has to be muscular, which...

I do feel that literature should be demystified. What I object to is what is happening in our era: l...

In order to create you have to believe in your ability to do so and that often means excluding whole...

In order to create you have to believe in your ability to do so and that often means excluding whole...

A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.

To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the music the words make.

[W]hen I put Jorge in the library I did not yet know he was the murderer. He acted on his own, so to...

The flimsy little protestations that mark the front gate of every novel, the solemn statements that ...

By his very profession, a serious fiction writer is a vendor of the sensuous particulars of life, a ...

Don't look back until you've written an entire draft, just begin each day from the last sentence you...

Don't look back until you've written an entire draft, just begin each day from the last sentence you...

When the lyrical muse sings the creative pen dances.

There was a moment when I changed from an amateur to a professional. I assumed the burden of a profe...