Serious Writing Quotes

I try to write as serious as possible, and then a joke slips in.

I never laugh or smile when I am writing. When I come home for lunch after writing all morning, my wife says I look like I just came home from a funeral. This is not bragging. This is an illness.

I started writing seriously when I was a teenager, around 14 years old.

I started writing seriously when I was 18, wrote my first novel when I was 22, and I've never stopped writing since.

A writer is not a confectioner, a cosmetic dealer, or an entertainer.

I drop my kid off at school and then race home, and it's a very limited time. I can only do really serious writing for a couple of hours. And then I always go on a walk, I do a one-to-two-hour walk; I don't go running or hard hiking.

While working on my first five books, I kept wishing I was writing a novel. I thought until you wrote a novel, you weren't taken seriously as a writer. It used to trouble me a lot, but nothing troubles me now, and besides, there has been a change. I think short stories are taken more seriously now than they were.

Real seriousness in regard to writing being one of the two absolute necessities. The other, unfortunately, is talent.

I've been writing poetry seriously since about 2008, 2009.

But it's writing, damn it, not washing the car or putting on eyeliner. If you can take it seriously, we can do business. If you can't or won't, it's time for you to close the book and do something else. Wash the car, maybe.

It's a completely powerful and serious book, as good as anything in prose or poetry written by a 'beat' writer, and one of the most alive books written by any American for years. I don't see how it could be considered immoral.

I can only do really serious writing for a couple of hours. And then I always go on a walk. I do a one-to-two-hour walk; I don't go running or hard hiking.

I'm working seven days a week in the fall. I couldn't possibly keep that up. This is only for the fall. In the last couple of years I've tended to do most of my serious writing in the winter, when there's nothing going on with football.

I thought I was going to be a serious screenwriter and produce serious films. It was going to be 'American Beauty' and very important work.

The time has come for writers to become inaccessible again. The reason is not some kind of 'mystique' that makes people curious (though it helps), but the fact that no real writers ever lay down anything real in public-they work in solitude, they think hard, and their thoughts are rarely nice or 'friendly.'

Writing a book is the most difficult, anxiety-prone aspect of my life because the words that I put on paper are very serious to me.

If a man means his writing seriously, he must mean to write well. But how can he write well until he learns to see what he has written badly. His progress toward good writing and his recognition of bad writing are bound to unfold at something like the same rate.

A serious writer is not to be confounded with a solemn writer. A serious writer may be a hawk or a buzzard or even a popinjay, but a solemn writer is always a bloody owl.

I want to be a popular novelist who's also serious, or a serious novelist who's also very accessible.

Great, big, serious novels always get awards. If it's a battle between a great, big, serious novel and a funny novel, the funny novel is doomed.

American literature had always considered writing a very serious matter.

From an early age, I had the idea that writing was truth-telling. It's on the record. Everybody can see it. Maybe it goes back to the sacred origins of literature - the holy book. There's nothing holy about it for me, but it should be serious, and it should be totally transparent.

I can't seem to escape comedy. Whenever I sit down and try to write something serious, it just doesn't work.

I started writing seriously about 1960, at the fairly advanced age of 30.

I obviously prefer writing novels but I take my journalism very seriously, and I enjoy doing it between novels. It gives me an opportunity to move in the outside world.