W.S. Merwin
“I’ve found that the best thing for me is to insist that some part of the day – and for me, it’s the morning until about two in the afternoon – be dedicated to writing. I go into my room and shut the door, and that’s that. You have to make exceptions, of course, but you just stick to it, and then it becomes a habit, and I think it’s a valuable one. If you’re waiting for lightning to strike a stump, you’re going to sit there for the rest of your life.”
W.S. Merwin
“We try to save what is passing, if only by describing it, telling it, knowing all the time that we can’t do any of these things. The urge to tell it, and the knowledge of the impossibility. Isn’t that one reason we write?”
W.S. Merwin
Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself.”
Truman Capote
“To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it’s about, but the inner music that words make.”
Truman Capote
“The difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean; not to affect your reader, but to affect him precisely as you wish.”
Robert Louis Stevenson
“You can’t write a story that’s got any life in it by sitting at a writing table and thinking. You’ve got to get out into the streets, into the crowds, talk with people, and feel the rush and throb of real life – that’s the stimulant for a story writer.”
O. Henry (William Sydney Porter)
“All literature is protest. You can’t name a single novel that isn’t protest.”
Richard Wright