Quotes about Writing: D

Good writing is essentially rewriting. ~ Roald Dahl
Writing is very different to having your photo taken. You are exposing yourself more, not physically but emotionally. ~ Sophie Dahl
Read a lot, finding out what kind of writing turns you on, in order to develop a criterion for your own writing. And then trust it—and yourself. ~ Rosemary Daniell
For me, writing is exploration; and most of the time, I'm surprised where the journey takes me. ~ Jack Dann
Never throw up on an editor. ~ Ellen Datlow
I think of an author as somebody who goes into the marketplace and puts down his rug and says, "I will tell you a story," and then he passes the hat. ~ Robertson Davies
There is absolutely no point in sitting down to write a book unless you feel that you must write that book, or else go mad, or die. ~ Robertson Davies
I keep little notepads all over the place to write down ideas as soon as they strike, but the ones that fill up the quickest are always the ones at my nightstand. ~ Emily Logan Decens

Writing isn’t hard — no harder than ditch digging. ~ Patrick Dennis
Make everybody fall out of the plane first, and then explain who they were and why they were in the plane to begin with. ~ Nancy Ann Dibble
The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words. ~ Philip K. Dick
Science fiction writers, I am sorry to say, really do not know anything. We can't talk about science, because our knowledge of it is limited and unofficial, and usually our fiction is dreadful. ~ Philip K. Dick
Writing is a cop-out. An excuse to live perpetually in fantasy land, where you can create, direct and watch the products of your own head. Very selfish. ~ Monica Dickens
Writing counts. ~ Allyson Dickey
I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear. ~ Joan Didion

We tell ourselves stories in order to live ~ Joan Didion
Writers are always selling somebody out. ~ Joan Didion
To shift the structure of a sentence alters the meaning of that sentence, as definitely and inflexibly as the position of a camera alters the meaning of the object photographed. ~ Joan Didion
At its best, the sensation of writing is that of any unmerited grace. It is handed to you, but only if you look for it. You search, you break your heart, your back, your brain, and then--and only then--it is handed to you. ~ Annie Dillard
Appealing workplaces are to be avoided. One wants a room with no view, so imagination can meet memory in the dark. ~ Annie Dillard
All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them. ~ Isak Dinesen
An author who speaks about his own books is almost as bad as a mother who talks about her own children. ~ Benjamin Disraeli
Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.~ E.L. Doctorow

Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader—not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon. ~ E.L. Doctorow
Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way. ~ E.L. Doctorow
Writers are not just people who sit down and write. They hazard themselves. Every time you compose a book your composition of yourself is at stake. ~ E.L. Doctorow
Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go. E. L. Doctorow
The act of composition is a series of discoveries. ~ E. L. Doctorow
Writing is turning one's worst moments into money. ~ J. P. Donleavy
The purpose of writing is to make your mother and father drop dead with shame. ~ J P Donleavy
As for me, this is my story: I worked and was tortured. You know what it means to compose? No, thank God, you do not! I believe you have never written to order, by the yard, and have never experienced that hellish torture. ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky

If it has horses and swords in it, it's a fantasy, unless it also has a rocketship in it, in which case it becomes science fiction. The only thing that'll turn a story with a rocketship in it back into fantasy is the Holy Grail. ~ Debra Doyle
To write good SF today...you must push further and harder, reach deeper into your own mind until you break through into the strange and terrible country wherein live your own dreams. ~ Gardner Dozois
The test of literature is, I suppose, whether we ourselves live more intensely for the reading of it. ~ Elizabeth Drew
For your born writer, nothing is so healing as the realization that he has come upon the right word. ~ Catherine Drinker Bowen
Writing, I think, is not apart from living. Writing is a kind of double living. The writer experiences everything twice. Once in reality and once in that mirror which waits always before or behind. ~ Catherine Drinker Bowen
A story has been thought to its conclusion when it has taken its worst possible turn. ~ Friedrich Dürrenmatt
A writer doesn't solve problems. He allows them to emerge. ~ Friedrich Dürrenmatt
What's money? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do. ~ Bob Dylan