John Steinbeck Quotes About Writing

Quotes about: Writing

• I guess there are never enough books.

  John Steinbeck

  Book, Writing, Enough

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

• Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish.

  John Steinbeck

  Writing, Ideas, Abandon

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

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

  John Steinbeck

  Horse, Book, Writing

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

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

  John Steinbeck

  Writing, Telling The Truth, Hardest

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

• Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.

  John Steinbeck

  Inspirational, Wisdom, Couple

  John Steinbeck, Thomas Fensch (1988). “Conversations with John Steinbeck”, p.124, Univ. Press of Mississippi

• 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.

  John Steinbeck

  Writing, Paper, Excuse

• 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.

  John Steinbeck

  Writing, Stories, Crafts

• 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.

  John Steinbeck

  Inspiring, Writing, Sadness

  "Steinbeck: A Life in Letters".

• 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.

  John Steinbeck

  Powerful, Believe, Writing

  The New York Times, June 02, 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.

  John Steinbeck

  Kings, Hero, Writing

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

• 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.

  John Steinbeck

  Writing, Thinking, Goes On

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

  John Steinbeck

  Stupid, Writing, Discipline

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

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

  John Steinbeck

  Writing, Paper, Whole

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

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

  John Steinbeck

  Art, Writing, Crafts

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

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

  John Steinbeck

  Dream, Writing, Excellence

• 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.

  John Steinbeck

  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.

  John Steinbeck

  Prayer, Writing, Color

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

• 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.

  John Steinbeck

  Writing, Ideas, Track

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

  John Steinbeck

  Lying, Writing, Mean

• 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.

  John Steinbeck

  Fall, Writing, Sick

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

• 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.

  John Steinbeck

  Writing, Mean, Cutting

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

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

  John Steinbeck

  Writing, Poetry, Mathematics

• I am writing this from what we Americans call Yurrp. In Yurrp writers are taken as seriously as Lana Turner's legs are in America - a ridiculous situation.

  John Steinbeck

  Travel, Taken, Home

• 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.

  John Steinbeck

  Running, Writing, Tired

• I have taken as much as six years to prepare a book for writing. There is such a delirium of effort in the production of a book; it's like childbirth. And, like childbirth, one forgets the pains immediately so that when you come to write another one you dare to take it up again. Some precious anesthesia sees you through.

  John Steinbeck

  Pain, Book, Taken

  John Steinbeck, Thomas Fensch (1988). “Conversations with John Steinbeck”, p.88, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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