In case you find quotes about writing helpful in your process, here are a few (and I’m happy to add your favorites!):
“Why am I compelled to write? Because the writing saves me from this complacency I fear. Because I have no choice. Because I must keep the spirit of my revolt and myself alive. Because the world I create in the writing compensates for what the real world does not give me. By writing I put order in the world, give it a handle so I can grasp it. I write because life does not appease my appetites and hunger. I write to record what others erase when I speak, to rewrite the stories others have miswritten about me, about you. To become more intimate with myself and you. To discover myself, preserve myself, to make myself, to achieve self-autonomy. To dispel the myths that I am a mad prophet or a poor suffering soul. To convince myself that I am worthy and that what I have to say is not a pile of shit. To show that I can and that I will write, never mind the outraged gasp of the censor and the audience. Finally I write because I’m scared of writing but I’m more scared of not writing.” Gloria Anzaldúa
“Speaking in Tongues: A Letter to Third World Women Writers” in This Bridge Called My Back.
“If you write what you yourself sincerely think and feel and are interested in… you will interest other people.” Rachel Carson
"I have a spelling checker,
It came with my PC;
It plainly marks four my revue
Mistakes I cannot sea.
I've run this poem threw it,
I'm sure your pleased too no,
Its letter perfect in it's weigh,
My checker tolled me sew."
Janet Minor *
* Quotes marked with an asterisk were shared with me by William Kelly, who has gathered a fantastic collection of reflections on writing.
A linguistics professor was lecturing to his class one day. "In English," he said, "A double negative forms a positive. In some languages, though, such as Russian, a double negative is still a negative. However, there is no language wherein a double positive can form a negative." A voice from the back of the room piped up, "Yeah, right.” *
"Do your work and I shall know you.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance *
"Do the thing and you shall have the power; but they who do not the thing have not the power.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, Compensation *
...Upon this gifted age, in its dark hour,
Rains from the sky a meteoric shower
Of facts...they lie unquestioned, uncombined.
Wisdom enough to leech us of our ill
Is daily spun; but there exists no loom
To weave it into fabric;...
- Edna St. Vincent Millay, Collected Sonnets *
Gustav Flaubert: "Prose is like hair; it shines with combing.” *
Bill Gray, the writer-recluse in Don DeLillo's Mao II: "I'm a sentence maker. Like a donut maker, only slower." *
"Every sentence has a truth waiting at the end of it and the writer learns how to know it when he finally gets there. On one level this truth is the swing of the sentence, the beat and poise, but down deeper it's the integrity of the writer as he matches with the language. I've always seen myself in sentences. I begin to recognize myself, word by word, as I work through a sentence. The language of my books has shaped me as a man. There is a moral force in a sentence when it comes out right. It speaks the writer's will to live."
"The more I practice, the luckier I get" Arnold Palmer *
“I can’t write without a reader. It’s precisely like a kiss — you can’t do it alone.” John Cheever *
Moliere on writing -
“Writing is like prostitution.
First you do it for the love of it,
Then you do it for a few friends,
And finally you do it for money.” *