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F. Scott Fitzgerald Quotes about Writing

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What people are ashamed of usually makes a good story.

What people are ashamed of usually makes a good story.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
Writing, People, Stories
F. Scott Fitzgerald, Matthew J. Bruccoli (1993). “Fitzgerald: The Love of the Last Tycoon: A Western”, p.99, Cambridge University Press

Life is a comedy for those who think and a tragedy for those who feel. Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
Hero, Writing, Thinking

Draw your chair up close to the edge of the precipice and I’ll tell you a story.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
Writing, Stories, Chairs
The Crack-Up "Note-Books" (1945)

Mostly, we authors must repeat ourselves - that's the truth. We have two or three great and moving experiences in our lives - experiences so great and moving that it doesn't seem at the time anyone else has been so caught up and so pounded and dazzled and astonished and beaten and broken and rescued and illuminated and rewarded and humbled in just that way ever before. Then we learn our trade, well or less well, and we tell our two or three stories - each time in a new disguise - maybe ten times, maybe a hundred, as long as people will listen.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
Moving, Writing, Two
F. Scott Fitzgerald, Matthew J. Bruccoli (1995). “The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald: A New Collection”, p.13, Simon and Schuster

Find the key emotion; this may be all you need know to find your short story.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
Writing, Keys, Story Writers

I wish I could write. I get these ideas but I never seem to be able to put them in words.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
Writing, Ideas, Wish
F. Scott Fitzgerald, Book House (2016). “F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Complete Novels (Book House)”, p.294, Book House

To write it, it took three months; to conceive it three minutes; to collect the data in it all my life.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
Writing, Data, Three
F. Scott Fitzgerald (2015). “The Great Gatsby”, p.110, Oxford University Press

Nothing any good isn't hard.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
Writing, Hard
F. Scott Fitzgerald (2010). “A Life in Letters”, p.512, Simon and Schuster

The reason one writes isn't the fact he wants to say something. He writes because he has something to say.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
Writing, Want, Facts

Begin with an individual, and before you know it you find that you have created a type; begin with a type, and you find that you have created - nothing.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
Writing, Individual, Type
"The Diamond as Big as the Ritz: And Other Stories".

You've got to sell your heart, your strongest reactions, not the little minor things that only touch you lightly, the little experiences that you might tell at dinner. This is especially true when you begin to write, when you have not yet developed the tricks of interesting people on paper, when you have none of the technique which it takes time to learn. When, in short, you have only your emotions to sell.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
Writing, Heart, People
F. Scott Fitzgerald (2010). “A Life in Letters”, p.611, Simon and Schuster

Great books write themselves, only bad books have to be written.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
Book, Writing, Great Book

An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmaster of ever afterwards.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
Writing, Generations, Literature
Letter to Booksellers' Convention, Apr. 1920

You can stroke people with words.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
Writing, People, Flattery
F. Scott Fitzgerald (2009). “The Crack-Up”, p.207, New Directions Publishing

Show me a hero and I'll write you a tragedy.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
Life, Hero, Writing
The Crack-Up "Note-Books" (1945)

Cut out all these exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
Writing, Cutting, Epic

Writers aren’t people exactly. Or, if they’re any good, they’re a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
Writing, People, Trying
F. Scott Fitzgerald (2015). “The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald: Novels, Short Stories, Poetry, Articles, Letters, Plays & Screenplays: From the author of The Great Gatsby, The Side of Paradise, Tender Is the Night, The Beautiful and Damned, The Love of the Last Tycoon, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and many other notable works”, p.834, e-artnow

If I knew words enough, I could write the longest love letter in the world and never get tired

F. Scott Fitzgerald
Writing, Tired, World
F. Scott Fitzgerald, Matthew J. Bruccoli (1995). “The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald: A New Collection”, p.20, Simon and Schuster

Character is plot, plot is character.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
Writing, Character, Plot

Writing is eternal, For therein the dead heart liveth, the clay-cold tongue is eloquent, And the quick eye of the reader is cleared by the reed of the scribe. As a fossil in the rock, or a coin in the mortar of a ruin, So the symbolled thoughts tell of a departed soul: The plastic hand hath its witness in a statue, and exactitude of vision in a picture, And so, the mind, that was among us, in its writings is embalmed.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
Writing, Heart, Eye

I'm one of those people who go through the world giving other people thrills, but getting few myself except those I read into men on such nights as these. I have the social courage to go on the stage, but not the energy; I haven't the patience to write books; and I never met a man I'd marry. However, I'm only eighteen.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
Book, Writing, Night
F. Scott Fitzgerald (2015). “The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald: Novels, Short Stories, Poetry, Articles, Letters, Plays & Screenplays: From the author of The Great Gatsby, The Side of Paradise, Tender Is the Night, The Beautiful and Damned, The Love of the Last Tycoon, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and many other notable works”, p.267, e-artnow

Every author ought to write every book as if he were going to be beheaded the day he finished it.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
Book, Writing, Ought
F. Scott Fitzgerald, Book House (2016). “F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Complete Novels (Book House)”, p.123, Book House

All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
Writing, Swimming, History
Letter to Frances Scott Fitzgerald (undated)

One writes of scars healed, a loose parallel to the pathology of the skin, but there is no such thing in the life of an individual.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
Writing, Skins, Scar
Tender Is the Night bk. 2, ch. 11 (1934)

I may turn out an intellectual, but I'll never write anything but mediocre poetry.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
Writing, Intellectual, May
F. Scott Fitzgerald (2015). “The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald: Novels, Short Stories, Poetry, Articles, Letters, Plays & Screenplays: From the author of The Great Gatsby, The Side of Paradise, Tender Is the Night, The Beautiful and Damned, The Love of the Last Tycoon, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and many other notable works”, p.168, e-artnow

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