Elizabeth Strout Quotes

I love the physical act of writing as well as how I grow which each situation I put on the page.

Journalists write because they have nothing to say, and have something to say because they write.

I'm not a writer because I want to make money. I'm a writer because I'm a very slow thinker, but I do care about thinking, and the only way I know how to think with any kind of finesse is by telling stories.

I have always thought of myself as a writer, only because I need things to direct, and I can't not write the things that I direct.

I write description in longhand because that's hardest for me and you're closer to the paper when you work by hand, but I use the typewriter for dialogue because people speak like a typewriter works.

I write to explore something that fascinates me, and I write the way I do because it is the only way I know how to write.

I work by hand, with a fountain pen, in bound notebooks I buy in India.

If you're writing, you're starting in private. It can really be this amazing, private, freeing experience. Forget that it's for other people - that comes in later.

I'm a writer, and the subject is less important than the act of writing itself.

I tend not to think about the reading public at all, or the business, when I'm writing.

I started out life as a writer, and writers write in part because they don't want to talk.

I've always been a 'write first' artist: the drawings are always in service of the writing.

I guess that in a lot of ways, my writing is more of a character to me than something that I feel personally attached to.

What I love is the writing, it's not having written. I like the process of it.

Novel-writing is the only place where someone who would have liked to do anything can still do that vicariously.

I just like to write and then perform.

I'm not a big gadget guy. When I write, I'll do the whole thing by hand, and then I'll put it into the computer.

I write in longhand. I am accustomed to that proximity, that feel of writing. Then I sit down and type.

I do a lot of revising on paper. Sometimes I think I should just write longhand - what I type reads very different once I print it out.

The first drafts of my novels have all been written in longhand, and then I type them up on my old electric. I have resisted getting a computer because I distrust the whole PC thing. I don't think a great book has yet been written on computer.

It was only after I began to write fiction that I found a way to connect with painting.

When I write I'm never really thinking about themes or the universal.

I didn't originally intend on writing a book. I started writing during the day to feel like I was accomplishing something creative.

My general working style is to write everything first with pencil and paper, sitting beside a big wastebasket. Then I use Emacs to enter the text into my machine.

Maybe I spent more time dwelling on emotions than some people, and maybe that's why I ended up writing.