Literature and Words

What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.

My prescription for writer’s block is to face the fact that there is no such thing. It’s an invented condition, a literary version of the judicial “abuse excuse.” Writing well is difficult, but one can always write something . And then, with a lot of work, make it better. It’s a question of having enough will and ambition, not of hoping to evade this mysterious hysteria people are always talking about.

Be sure that you go to the author to get at his meaning, not to find yours.

The artists who want to be writers, read the reviews; the artists who want to write, don’t.

You have to saturate yourself with English poetry in order to compose English prose.

You can never know enough about your characters.

Rely on the sudden erection of your small dorsal hairs.

A character has his own logic. He goes his way, one goes with him; he has some perceptions, one perceives them with him. You do him justice; you don’t grind your own axe.

Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn.

Write without pay until somebody offers pay; if nobody offers within three years, sawing wood is what you were intended for.

The best thing you can do about critics is never say a word. In the end you have the last say, and they know it.

You can be a little ungrammatical if you come from the right part of the country.

No one who intends to take up writing as a career should read any work that lies in the category in which his own efforts would be placed. If he disobeys this rule, he will almost certainly feel he must write literature instead of trying to say what he means.

I never write metropolis for seven cents because I can get the same price for city . I never write policeman because I can get the same money for cop .

There is some pleasure even in words, when they bring forgetfulness of present miseries.

I might write four lines or I might write twenty. I subtract and I add until I really hit something I want to do. You don’t always whittle down, sometimes you whittle up.

The character that lasts is an ordinary guy with some extraordinary qualities.

Do not pay any attention to the rules other people make.… They make them for their own protection, and to hell with them.

A good stylist should have narcissistic enjoyment as he works. He must be able to objectivize his work to such an extent that he catches himself feeling envious and has to jog his memory to find that he is himself the creator. In short, he must display that highest degree of objectivity which the world calls vanity.

Read, read, read. Read everything—trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. If it is good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out the window.

You have to take pains in a memoir not to hang on the reader’s arm, like a drunk, and say, “And then I did this and it was so interesting.”

A good style should show no sign of effort. What is written should seem a happy accident.

At a reading in 1968, the poet Marianne Moore solicited questions from the audience and someone asked, “What words of advice, if any, would you give to a beginning poet who hates words?” The 81-year-old Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner pondered for a moment and then replied, “That may be very auspicious. Words are a very great trap.” Words have weight, sound and appearance; it is only by considering these that you can write a sentence that is good to look at and good to listen to.

It is advantageous to an author that his book should be attacked as well as praised. Fame is a shuttlecock. If it be struck at only one end of the room, it will soon fall to the ground. To keep it up, it must be struck at both ends.