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I did not write it. God wrote it. I merely did his dictation.
--
Introduction to an 1879 edition.

 

Harriet Beecher Stowe

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People have got that ancient prejudice so firmly rooted in their heads — that one mustn't write save at I the dictation of the Holy Spirit. I tell you, writing is a business.

 

George Gissing

 

I was trying to solve the problem of this book. (My Life as a Man) When it seemed I never would, I stopped and wrote Our Gang; when I tried again and still couldn't write it, I stopped and wrote the baseball book; then while finishing the baseball book, I stopped to write The Breast. It was as though I were blasting my way through a tunnel to reach the novel I couldn't write. Each of one's books is a blast, clearing the way for what's next.

 

Philip Roth

 

So little was there of the propagandist in him that he never seemed much interested in the fate of his work. He once wrote me a remarkable letter of advice in which he expressed succinctly his idea of a writer's duty to himself: "Write what you want to write, as well as you can, and then forget it." ... But he wrote that little "as well as he could," and that was well indeed; so well that while there are still a few who love freedom, wisdom, excellence of thought and style, those few will be his readers. And they are the only readers he would want.

 

Albert Jay Nock

 

Joubert had this gift. He never wrote a book. He only prepared to write one, resolutely seeking the exact conditions that would allow him to write it. Then he forgot even his plan.

 

Joseph Joubert

 

I write about violence as naturally as Jane Austen wrote about manners. Violence shapes and obsesses our society, and if we do not stop being violent we have no future. People who do not want writers to write about violence want to stop them writing about us and our time. It would be immoral not to write about violence.

 

Edward Bond