On Writing A Book Quotes

“When you're writing a book, it's rather like going on a very long walk, across valleys and mountains and things, and you get the first view of what you see and you write it down. Then you walk a bit further, maybe up onto the top of a hill, and you see something else. Then you write that and you go on like that, day after day, getting different views of the same landscape really. The highest mountain on the walk is obviously the end of the book, because it's got to be the best view of all, when everything comes together and you can look back and see that everything you've done all ties up. But it's a very, very long, slow process.”
― Roald Dahl

“Writing a novel is like childbirth: once you realize how awful it really is, you never want to do it again.”
― Sarah Dessen, This Lullaby

“The difference between wanting to write and having written is one year of hard, relentless labour. It's a bridge you have to build all by yourself, all alone, all through the night, while the world goes about its business without giving a damn. The only way of making this perilous passage is by looking at it as a pilgrimage.”
― Shatrujeet Nath

“Well,the fun part of being a writer is that it's like making a wonderful film, with no limit on my budget. I can design the sets, the costume, the lightings, I write the script, and then I get to perform all the roles as I step into each character's skin, zip up, and adopt that point of view. So, to me, they are all compelling and fascinating.”
― Robin Hobb

“One of the few things I know about writing is this:spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is a signal to spend it now. Something more will arise later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water.”
― Annie Dillard, The Writing Life

“Writing a novel is like traveling the universe on foot.”
― Dennis R. Miller

“Focus on writing first.”
― Lyra Parish

“Il avait lu des masses de livres là-dessus, tout récement celui d'Hannah Arendt sur le procès d'Eichmann à Jérusalem, il savait que le jour où il écrirait sérieusement, ce serait à ce sujet. Le nazisme, tous les habitants de la seconde moitié du XXe siècle doivent se débrouiller avec, vivre avec l'idée que c'est arrivé, comme lui devait vivre avec la mort de sa soeur Jane. On peut ne pas y penser, n'empêche que c'est là, et il faudrait que ce soit aussi dans son livre.

Rien de plus éloigné du tao que le nazisme. Les Japonais, pourtant, qui vénèrent le tao, avaient été alliés aux nazis. S'ils l'avaient emporté... Un moment, il laissa miroiter cette idée. On avait déjà fait des livres de ce genre, il en avait lu un d'après lequel le Sud avait gagné la guerre de Sécession. Il se demanda ce que serait un monde issu de la victoire de l'Axe, quinze ans plus tòt. Qui dirigerait le Reich ? Hitler toujours l'un de ses lieutenants ? Est-ce que cela changerait quelque chose que ce soit Bormann, Himmler, Goering ou Baldur von Schirach? Est-ce que cela changerait quelque chose pour lui, habitant de Point Reyes, Marin County ? Et quoi?”
― Emmanuel Carrère

“I feel like the book was successful in that I graduated out of a lot of those concerns by writing the book. When I wrote the book, my passion and anger were located much more outwardly and so the tone of the narrator, who I think a very angry person, is not something I relate to anymore.”
― Ottessa Moshfegh

“To write a book is to suspend the present and create a new reality.”
― Susan Dudics-Dean aka Suzanne Quill

“Getting an idea is not enough.
But when you get two ideas, and they collide and have a bastard love child, that's when true stories are born.”
― Johan M. Dahlgren

“I just always wanted to write. I think it stems from always wanting to read. Somewhere along the lines of being entertained, I thought... I would like to entertain others.”
― Diane M Chattaway