Elie Wiesel Quotes About Writing

Quotes about: Writing

• I write to understand as much as to be understood.

  Elie Wiesel

  Writing, Understanding, Literature

  Elie Wiesel (2011). “From the Kingdom of Memory: Reminiscences”, p.12, Schocken

• Write only if you cannot live without writing. Write only what you alone can write.

  Elie Wiesel

  Inspirational, Writing, Ifs

• There is a difference between a book of two hundred pages from the very beginning, and a book of two hundred pages which is the result of an original eight hundred pages. The six hundred are there. Only you don't see them.

  Elie Wiesel

  Book, Writing, Eight

  Elie Wiesel, Robert Franciosi (2002). “Elie Wiesel: Conversations”, p.72, Univ. Press of Mississippi

• Writing is like a sculpture where you remove, you eliminate, in order to make the work visible. Even those pages you remove somehow remain

  Elie Wiesel

  Writing, Order, Sculpture

  Elie Wiesel, Robert Franciosi (2002). “Elie Wiesel: Conversations”, p.72, Univ. Press of Mississippi

• Some stories are true that never happened.

  Elie Wiesel

  Love, Dream, Writing

• That I survived the Holocaust and went on to love beautiful girls, to talk, to write, to have toast and tea and live my life - that is what is abnormal.

  Elie Wiesel

  Beautiful, Girl, Writing

  Interview with Oprah Winfrey, www.oprah.com. November, 2000.

• Acutely aware of the poverty of my means, language became obstacle. At every page I thought, 'That's not it.' So I began again with other verbs and other images. No, that wasn't it either. But what exactly was that it I was searching for? It must have been all that eludes us, hidden behind a veil so as not to be stolen, usurped and trivialized. Words seemed weak and pale.

  Elie Wiesel

  Writing, Mean, Elude Us

• Did I write it so as not to go mad or, on the contrary, to go mad in order to understand the nature of madness?

  Elie Wiesel

  Writing, Order, Mad

  Elie Wiesel (2012). “Night”, p.4, Macmillan

• In my lifetime I was to write only one book, this would be the one. Just as the past Lingers in the present, all my writings after night, including those that deal with biblical, Talmudic, or Hasidic themes, profoundly bear it's stamp, and cannot be understood if one has not read this very first of my works. Why did I write it? Did I write it so as not to go mad or, on the contrary, to go mad in order to understand the nature of the madness, the immense, terrifying madness that had erupted in history and in the conscience of mankind?

  Elie Wiesel

  Book, Writing, Biblical

  Elie Wiesel (2012). “Night”, p.4, Hill and Wang

• You cannot write in more than one language. Words don't come out as well.

  Elie Wiesel

  Writing, Language Words, Language

  Source: alainelkanninterviews.com

• Writers write because they cannot allow the characters that inhabit them to suffocate them. These characters want to get out, to breathe fresh air and partake of the wine of friendship; were they to remain locked in, they would forcibly break down the walls. It is they who force the writer to tell their stories.

  Elie Wiesel

  Wall, Character, Writing

• And to write is to sow and to reap at the same time.

  Elie Wiesel

  Writing, Reap

  Elie Wiesel (2010). “All Rivers Run to the Sea: Memoirs”, p.17, Schocken

• If there is a single theme that dominates all my writings, all my obsessions, it is that of memory-because I fear forgetfulness as much as hatred and death.

  Elie Wiesel

  Memories, Writing, Hatred

  Elie Wiesel (2011). “From the Kingdom of Memory: Reminiscences”, p.8, Schocken

• I have an open mind - - I read, I study, I study your work and the work of other people with less talent. But that is not what I do in my writing and teaching. Still the love for the text we have in common.

  Elie Wiesel

  Teaching, Writing, People

  Source: www.biblicalarchaeology.org

• The act of writing is for me often nothing more than the secret or conscious desire to carve words on a tombstone: to the memory of a town forever vanished, to the memory of a childhood in exile, to the memory of all those I loved and who, before I could tell them I loved them, went away.

  Elie Wiesel

  Memories, Tombstone, Writing

  Elie Wiesel (2011). “Legends of Our Time”, p.10, Schocken

• You cross a border and the policeman or the frontier policeman look at you, What are you doing here? Why are you coming? How long will you stay? Well, if I had nearly enough years, I would write a novel about being a refugee.

  Elie Wiesel

  Writing, Years, Long

  Source: www.savetibet.org

• I'm a privileged person, I feel privileged because of who I am. I write books, I write novels, I write essays and I teach and I go from university to university. I'm one of the old, but I still go around, but I only see those who are not like that, I don't see the junk youth. I only meet students, and even those who are not formally at the university, if they come to listen to me, they come to read me, it means they are not junk students.

  Elie Wiesel

  Book, Mean, Writing

  Interview with Professor Georg Klein, www.nobelprize.org. December 10, 2004.

• We live in the age of communication. Write letters to the editor. Speak to your congressman, to your senator. If you are young, especially young people are taken by this human rights activities. They should organize the universities.

  Elie Wiesel

  Communication, Taken, Writing

  Source: www.savetibet.org

• Writing should not be routine; writing should actually be the opposite of procedural because otherwise the written word would become a routine word.

  Elie Wiesel

  Writing, Opposites, Routine

  Source: www.commonwealmagazine.org

• Usually I get up early every morning and from 6:00 to 10:00 I write. The rest of the time I study and prepare my work or I do other things. But four hours a day are exclusively devoted to writing.

  Elie Wiesel

  Morning, Writing, Up Early

  Source: www.commonwealmagazine.org

• I listen to music when I write. I need the musical background. Classical music. I'm behind the times. I'm still with Baroque music, Gregorian chant, the requiems, and with the quartets of Beethoven and Brahms. That is what I need for the climate, for the surroundings, for the landscape: the music.

  Elie Wiesel

  Writing, Musical, Needs

  Source: www.commonwealmagazine.org

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