Writing Quotes by John Steinbeck · Page 3

A creative person has to be alive. He can't borrow from things he's done in the past. He can't let his method…

— John Steinbeck

Three hours of writing require twenty hours of preparation. Luckily I have learned to dream about the work, which saves me some…

— John Steinbeck

“Literature is as old as speech. It grew out of human need for it and it has not changed except to become…

— John Steinbeck

Poetry is the mathematics of writing and closely kin to music.

— John Steinbeck

A writer lives in awe of words, for they can be cruel or kind, and they can change their meanings right in…

— John Steinbeck

“In utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable... The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most…

— John Steinbeck

Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do...Try to be better than yourself.

— John Steinbeck

If there is a magic in story writing, and I am convinced that there is, no one has ever been able to…

— John Steinbeck

I have written a great many stories and I still don't know how to go about it except to write it and…

— John Steinbeck

If a scene or a section gets the better of you and you still think you want it-bypass it and go on.…

— John Steinbeck

“Unless a writer's capable of solitude, he should leave books alone and go into the theater.”

— John Steinbeck

Maybe the hardest thing in writing is simply to tell the truth about things as we see them.

— John Steinbeck

“The writer is delegated to declare and to celebrate man's proven capacity for greatness of heart and spirit—for gallantry in defeat, for…

— John Steinbeck

Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing…

— John Steinbeck

“A writer out of loneliness is trying to communicate like a distant star sending signals. He isn't telling, or teaching, or ordering.…

— John Steinbeck

Writers are a little below clowns and a little above trained seals.

— John Steinbeck

A good writer always works at the impossible.

— John Steinbeck

“Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing…

— John Steinbeck

“Then there were his education and his reading, the books he bought and borrowed, his knowledge of things that could not be…

— John Steinbeck

A woman journalist in England asked me why Americans usually wrote about their childhood and a past that happened only in imagination,…

— John Steinbeck

The profession of book writing makes horse racing seem like a solid, stable business.

— John Steinbeck

I guess there are never enough books.

— John Steinbeck

Writing to me is a deeply personal, even a secret function and when the product I turned loose it is cut off…

— John Steinbeck

I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in…

— John Steinbeck

I do want to make it very convincing. And the best way to do that is to put most of it in…

— John Steinbeck