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John Steinbeck Quotes about Writing

All John Steinbeck Quotes Ambition Art Business Challenges Chaos Character Children Choices Confusion Country Criticism Design Desire Doubt Dying Earth Effort Evil Fate Fear Feelings Fighting Freedom Friendship Giving Gold Greatness Greed Guilt Hate Hatred Heart Heaven Hell Home Honesty Horror House Hunger Hurt Inspirational Journey Joy Kindness Laughter Life Literature Loneliness Loss Love Luck Lying Magic Mathematics Memories Morning Mountain Nature Obsession Pain Past Philosophy Pleasure Prayer Pride Quality Rain Reading Reality Responsibility Running Sadness Science Sickness Sin Singing Sleep Socialism Son Sorrow Soul Struggle Suffering Summer Teaching Travel Understanding Waiting Wall War Water Wife Winning Winter Worry Writing quotes

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

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

Dream, Writing, Excellence

To finish is sadness to a writer — a little death. He puts the last word down and it is done. But it isn't really done. The story goes on and leaves the writer behind, for no story is ever done.

Inspiring, Writing, Sadness

"Steinbeck: A Life in Letters".

In writing, habit seems to be a much stronger force than either willpower or inspiration.

Inspiration, Writing, Stronger

John Steinbeck (1990). “Working Days: The Journals of The Grapes of Wrath”, p.118, Penguin

I nearly always write — just as I nearly always breathe.

Writing, Breathe

"Steinbeck: A Life in Letters".

Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page a day, it helps. Then when it gets finished, you are always surprised.

Writing, Ideas, Track

John Steinbeck (1989). “Steinbeck: A Life in Letters”, p.611, Penguin

Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper.

Writing, Paper, Whole

John Steinbeck (1989). “Steinbeck: A Life in Letters”, p.611, Penguin

Your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person-a real person you know, or an imagined person and write to that one.

Real, Writing, Helping

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

Writing, Telling The Truth, Hardest

John Steinbeck (1990). “Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters”, p.107, Penguin

If there is a magic in story writing, and I am convinced that there is, no one has ever been able to reduce it to a recipe that can be passed from one person to another. The formula seems to lie solely in the aching urge of the writer to convey something he feels important to the reader. If the writer has that urge, he may sometimes but by no means always find the way to do it.

Lying, Writing, Mean

The craft or art of writing is the clumsy attempt to find symbols for the wordlessness.

Art, Writing, Crafts

John Steinbeck (1990). “Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters”, p.8, Penguin

Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish.

Writing, Ideas, Abandon

John Steinbeck (1989). “Steinbeck: A Life in Letters”, p.611, Penguin

The discipline of the written word punishes both stupidity and dishonesty.

Stupid, Writing, Discipline

John Steinbeck (2001). “A Life in Letters”, p.729, Penguin UK

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

Writing, Stories, Crafts

I guess there are never enough books.

Book, Writing, Enough

John Steinbeck (2001). “The Acts of King Arthur and his Noble Knights”, p.304, Penguin UK

Writing to me is a deeply personal, even a secret function and when the product I turned loose it is cut off from me and I have no sense of its being mine. Consequently criticism doesn't mean anything to me. As a disciplinary matter, it is too late.

Writing, Mean, Cutting

"John Steinbeck, The Art of Fiction No. 45". Interview with Nathaniel Benchley, www.theparisreview.org. Fall 1969.

Boileau said that Kings, Gods and Heroes only were fit subjects for literature. The writer can only write about what he admires. Present-day kings aren't very inspiring, the gods are on a vacation and about the only heroes left are the scientists and the poor.

Kings, Hero, Writing

John Steinbeck (1990). “Working Days: The Journals of The Grapes of Wrath”, p.21, Penguin

Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on.

Writing, Paper, Excuse

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

Horse, Book, Writing

"The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights". Book by John Steinbeck, 1976.

The craft of writing is the art of penetrating other minds with the figures that are in your own mind.

Art, Writing, Mind

John Steinbeck, Thomas Fensch (1988). “Conversations with John Steinbeck”, p.44, Univ. Press of Mississippi

After the bare requisites to living and reproducing, man wants most to leave some record of himself, a proof, perhaps, that he has really existed. He leaves his proof on wood, on stone or on the lives of other people. This deep desire exists in everyone, from the boy who writes dirty words in a public toilet to the Buddha who etches his image in the race mind. Life is so unreal. I think that we seriously doubt that we exist and go about trying to prove that we do.

Dirty, Writing, Boys

John Steinbeck (1995). “The Pastures of Heaven”, p.59, Penguin

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

Dream, Writing, Preparation

John Steinbeck (1989). “Steinbeck: A Life in Letters”, p.67, Penguin

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 choose his subjects or his characters. They can't be warped to fit his style.

Writing, Character, Past

I start out to write five days a week, and then it runs to six days and finally seven. Then, eventually, that wave of weariness overwhelms me and I don't know what's the matter. That is, I know but I won't admit it. I'm just tired from writing. As you get older, writing becomes harder. By that I mean you see so many more potentialities. Things like transition used to trouble me. But not any more. When I say it's harder, I'm not talking about facility. You learn all the so-called tricks, but then you don't want to use them.

Running, Writing, Tired

The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true.

Powerful, Believe, Writing

The New York Times, June 02, 1969.

If a scene or a section gets the better of you and you still think you want it-bypass it and go on. When you have finished the whole you can come back to it and then you may find that the reason it gave trouble is because it didn't belong there.

Writing, Thinking, Goes On

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