Authors:

A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
X
Y
Z

John Steinbeck Quotes about Writing - Page 2

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

When I face the desolate impossibility of writing five hundred pages, a sick sense of failure falls on me, and I know I can never do it. Then gradually, I write one page and then another. One day's work is all I can

When I face the desolate impossibility of writing five hundred pages, a sick sense of failure falls on me, and I know I can never do it. Then gradually, I write one page and then another. One day's work is all I can permit myself to contemplate.

Fall, Writing, Sick

John Steinbeck (1980). “Travels with Charley in Search of America”, p.17, Penguin

A woman journalist in England asked me why Americans usually wrote about their childhood and a past that happened only in imagination, why they never wrote about the present. This bothered me until I realized why - that a novelist wants to know how it comes out, that he can't be omnipotent writing a book about the present, particularly this one.

Book, Writing, Past

John Steinbeck, Thomas Fensch (1988). “Conversations with John Steinbeck”, p.73, Univ. Press of Mississippi

A good writer always works at the impossible.There is another kind who pulls in his horizons, drops his mind as one lowers rifle sights.

Writing, Sight, Mind

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

I suffer as always from the fear of putting down the first line. It is amazing the terrors, the magics, the prayers, the straitening shyness that assail one. It is as though the words were not only indelible but that they spread out like dye in water and color everything around them. A strange and mystic business, writing.

Prayer, Writing, Color

John Steinbeck (1990). “Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters”, p.12, Penguin

I write because I like to write. I find joy in the texture and tone and rhythm of words. It is a satisfaction like that which follows good and shared love.

Writing, Joy, Texture

John Steinbeck, Thomas Fensch (1988). “Conversations with John Steinbeck”, p.95, Univ. Press of Mississippi

The basic rule [of writing] given us was simple and heartbreaking. A story to be effective had to convey something from the writer to the reader, and the power of its offering was the measure of its excellence. Outside of that, there were no rules.

Writing, Simple, Offering

They must be real people. And this means that every word in every line of speech must be accurate and full of some kind of meaning which stretches not only forward in the book but stems from before in the book.

Real, Book, Writing

John Steinbeck (1990). “Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters”, p.115, Penguin

I wish to God I knew as much about writing as I did when I was 19. I was absolutely certain about most things then. Also, I suspect, more accurate.

Writing, Wish, Certain

Give a critic an inch, he'll write a play.

Writing, Play, Giving

"Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, Fourth Series". Book edited by George Plimpton. Chapter "On Critics", 1977.

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

Writing, Want, Way

John Steinbeck (1990). “Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters”, p.164, Penguin

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

Writing, Poetry, Mathematics

The curious hocus-pocus of criticism I can't take seriously. It consists in squirreling up some odd phrases and then waiting for a book to come running by.

Running, Book, Writing

John Steinbeck (1995). “The Long Valley”, p.7, Penguin

I have no interest in the printed word. I would continue to write if there were no writing and no print. I put my words down for a matter of memory. They are more made to be spoken than to be read.

Memories, Writing, Printed Word

I don't think there is a single sentence in this whole book [East of Eden] that does not either develop character, carry on the story or provide necessary background.

Book, Writing, Character

John Steinbeck (1990). “Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters”, p.133, Penguin

If there is a magic in story writing, and I am convinced there is, no one has ever been able to reduce it to a recipe that can be passed from one person to another.

Writing, Magic, Stories

When you collect marine animals there are certain flat worms so delicate that they are almost impossible to capture whole, for they break and tatter under the touch. You must let them ooze and crawl of their own will onto a knife blade and then lift them gently into your bottle of sea water. And perhaps that might be the way to write this book — to open the page and let the stories crawl in by themselves.

Book, Writing, Marine

"Cannery Row".

You May Also Like: