Quotes by category:Writing

I like to be aware of a book as a piece of writing, and aware of its structure as a product of mind, and yet I want to be able to see the represented world through it. I admire artists who succeed in dividing my attention more or less evenly between the world of their books and the art of their books . . . so that a reader may study the work with pleasure as well as the world that it describes.

writing book art

Writers serve as the memory of a people. They chew over our publi... by Annie Dillard

Writers serve as the memory of a people. They chew over our public past.

writing memories past

Many writers do little else but sit in small rooms recalling the... by Annie Dillard

Many writers do little else but sit in small rooms recalling the real world.

small-rooms real writing

When you write, you lay out a line of words. by Annie Dillard

When you write, you lay out a line of words.

finding-yourself lines writing

Write as if you are dying. by Annie Dillard

Write as if you are dying.

dying ifs writing

For writing a first draft requires from the writer a peculiar internal state which ordinary life does not induce. ... how to set yourself spinning?

doe ordinary writing

Whenever an encounter between a writer of good will and a regular person of good will happens to touch on the subject of writing, each person discovers, dismayed, that good will is of no earthly use. The conversation cannot proceed.

encounters use writing

Let the grass die. I let almost all of my indoor plants die from neglect while I was writing the book. There are all kinds of ways to live. You can take your choice. You can keep a tidy house, and when St. Peter asks you what you did with your life, you can say, I kept a tidy house, I made my own cheese balls.

house writing book

The written word is weak. Many people prefer life to it. Life gets your blood going, & it smells good. Writing is mere writing, literature is mere. It appeals only to the subtlest senses—the imagination’s vision, & the imagination’s hearing—& the moral sense, & the intellect. This writing that you do, that so thrills you, that so rocks & exhilarates you, as if you were dancing next to the band, is barely audible to anyone else.

smell writing blood

Evolution loves death more than it loves you or me. This is easy to write, easy to read, and hard to believe.

love-you writing believe

At night I read and write, and things I have never understood become clear; I reap the harvest of the rest of the year's planting

writing night years

The sensation of writing a book is the sensation of spinning, bli... by Annie Dillard

The sensation of writing a book is the sensation of spinning, blinded by love and daring.

spinning writing book

The sensation of writing a book is the sensation of spinning, blinded by love and daring. It is the sensation of a stunt pilot's turning barrel rolls, or an inchworm's blind rearing from a stem in search of a route. At its worst, it feels like alligator wrestling, at the level of the sentence.

writing wrestling book

It makes more sense to write one big book - a novel or nonfiction narrative - than to write many stories or essays. Into a long, ambitious project you can fit or pour all you possess and learn.

writing long book

Adverbs are a sign that you've used the wrong verb. by Annie Dillard

Adverbs are a sign that you've used the wrong verb.

verbs used writing

On plenty of days the writer can write three or four pages, and on plenty of other days he concludes he must throw them away.

four three writing

You can, in short, lead the life of the mind, which is, despite some appalling frustrations, the happiest life on earth. And one day, in the thick of this, approaching some partial vision, you will (I swear) find yourself on the receiving end of - of all things - an "idea for a story," and you will, God save you, start thinking about writing some fiction of your own. Then you will understand, in what I fancy might be a blinding flash, that all this passionate thinking is what fiction is about, that all those other fiction writers started as you did, and are laborers in the same vineyard.

frustration writing thinking

I write in my own journal when something extraordinary or funny happens. And there's some nice imagery in there. I don't think of what to do with it.

nice writing thinking

Old memories are very easy to get except that once you write abou... by Annie Dillard

Old memories are very easy to get except that once you write about something you've destroyed it.

easy writing memories

What I did with my first records was, my writing process was that I didn't touch any instruments to write it, so I was making it all on the computer, and really the arrangements were coming first, the intricate thing.

records writing firsts