This is Writing

Quotations
"'The p'int of good writing is to know when to stop.'" -L.M. Montgomery, Anne's House of Dreams

"The thing about writing is not to talk, but to do it; no matter how bad or even mediocre it is, the process and production is the thing, not the sitting and theorizing about how one should write ideally, or how well on could write if one really wanted to or had the time." -Sylvia Plath, Letters Home

"Writing sharpens life; life enriches writing." -Sylvia Plath, Letters Home

"When I say I must write, I don't mean I must publish. There is a great difference." -Sylvia Plath, Letters Home

"…Writing, meanwhile, is almost always empty.  There's nothing in the guts of a the man who sits there writing." -Roberto Bolaño (Translated by Natasha Wimmer), 2666

"It seems to me possible, perhaps desirable, that I may be the only person in this room who has committed the folly of writing, trying to write, or failing to write, a novel. And when I asked myself, as your invitation to speak to you about modern fiction made me ask myself, what demon whispered in my ear and urged me to my doom, a little figure rose before me – the figure of a man, or of a woman, who said, 'My name is Brown. Catch me if you can.'
Most novelists have the same experience. Some Brown, Smith, or Jones comes before them and says in the most seductive and charming way in the world, 'Come and catch me if you can.' And so, led on by this will-o'-the-wisp, they flounder through volume after volume, spending the best years of their lives in the pursuit, and receiving for the most part very little cash in exchange. Few catch the phantom; most have to be content with a scrap of her dress or a wisp of her hair." -Virginia Woolf, "Character in Fiction"