Writing

“I believe there is something that can be passed between writers, between generations—that changes in time but not in essentials.”

“My process is thinking, thinking and thinking -- thinking about my stories for a long time.”

“This time, I was telling my own story instead of creating characters in my head.”

“文以载道，儒者无不能言之。”

“I don’t sit down and write. That’s never been my style.”

“I found it impossible to write in the stanza form.”

“As a writer I just try to express an idea.”

“Literature begins with that “why,” even if we were to answer that question over and over with an ordinary “I don’t know.””

“I began writing in rather chauvinistic times. Luckily, now, things are very different.”

“Ma découverte interesse toutes les nations, et c’est pour toutes les nations que je veux faire et mon histoire et mon apologie.”

“When I’m writing novels, reality and unreality just naturally get mixed together.”

“When you're writing a story, it often feels less like you're doing architecture and more like you're doing excavation—we're just unearthing it.”

“When you sit with your pen, every year of your life is right there, wired into the communication between your brain and your writing hand.”

“The most important thing is that I'm writing in Irish Gaelic.”

“In the case of history what matters is its meaning; its medium is events, and its vehicle is literature.”

“La precisión me interesa hasta la obsesión.”

“If you can paint with a brush, you can paint with words.”

“As for myself, I do not know anything except swimming. Your article on that subject is exactly right.”