« All Writing Quotes · Susan Sontag's Page
Writing Quotes by Susan Sontag
- We live under continual threat of two equally fearful, but seemingly opposed destinies: unremitting banality and inconceivable terror. It is fantasy, served out in large…
- Why wouldn't you write to escape yourself as much as you might write to express yourself? It's far more interesting to write about others.
- I don't write easily or rapidly. My first draft usually has only a few elements worth keeping. I have to find what those are and…
- The solution to a problem - a story that you are unable to finish - is the problem. It isn't as if the problem is…
- I am profoundly uncertain how to write. I know what I love and what I like, because it's a direct passionate response. But when I…
- There is a great deal that either has to be given up or be taken away from you if you are going to succeed in…
- A great writer has all 4 - but you can still be a good writer with only 1 and 2.
- To make your life being a writer, it's an auto-slavery ... you are both the slave and the task-master.
- The only story that seems worth writing is a cry, a shot, a scream. A story should break the reader's heart.
- My idea of a writer: someone interested in everything.
- I don't write because there's an audience. I write because there is literature.
- Writing is a little door. Some fantasies, like big pieces of furniture, won’t come through.
- Norman Mailer in his writings is ultimately more concerned with success than with danger; danger is only a means to success.
- The best emotions to write out of are anger and fear or dread. The least energizing emotion to write out of is admiration. It is…
- We fret about words, we writers. Words mean. Words point. They are arrows. Arrows stuck in the rough hide of reality. And the more portentous,…
- Talking like touching. Writing like punching somebody.
- I write in spurts. I write when I have to because the pressure builds up and I feel enough confidence that something has matured in…
- The truth is always something that is told, not something that is known. If there were no speaking or writing, there would be no truth…
- The writer is either a practicing recluse or a delinquent, guilt-ridden one--or both. Usually both.
- Writing is a mysterious activity.
- If I thought that what I'm doing when I write is expressing myself, I'd junk the typewriter. Writing is a much more complicated activity that…
- My urge to write is an urge not to self-expressionism but to self-transcendence. My work is both bigger and smaller than I am.
- ...what I write is smarter than I am. Because I can rewrite it.
- Reading usually precedes writing. And the impulse to write is almost always fired by reading. Reading, the love of reading, is what makes you dream…
- Perhaps it is our perennial fate to be surprised by the simultaneity of events, by the sheer extension of the world in time and space.…
More Writing Quotes
- Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it. — Hannah Arendt
- Writing makes you feel that there is a reason to go on living. If I couldn't write, I would stop breathing. — Paul Auster
- I started out in life as a poet; I was only writing poetry all through my 20s. It wasn't until I was… — Paul Auster
- I write the paragraph, then I'm crossing out, changing words, trying to improve it. When it seems more or less OK, then… — Paul Auster
- When we were making the law, when we were writing the literature and the mathematics the grandfarthers of Blair and little Bush… — Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf
- A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit. — Richard Bach
- In every song I write, whether it's a love song or a political song or a song about family, the one thing… — Billie Joe Armstrong
- I grew up in a working-class family, so I guess you could say I write from what I know. — Andrea Arnold
- Writing comes more easily if you have something to say. — Sholem Asch
- Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today - but the core… — Isaac Asimov
- If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster. — Isaac Asimov
- Science fiction writers foresee the inevitable, and although problems and catastrophes may be inevitable, solutions are not. — Isaac Asimov