Quotations

Selections from my own work and the works of other writers.

Writing can be simultaneously the best job in the world and the worst: on one end of the spectrum you have the writer whose work is read and enjoyed by innumerable people; on the other is the writer whose work—after months or even years of painstaking craft—remains unpublished.
Christopher Frewin
Sometimes you have to go on when you don't feel like it, and sometimes you're doing good work when it feels like all you're managing is to shovel shit from a sitting position.
Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (opens in a new tab)
The bakery shop of English is rich beyond belief.
Ursula K. Le Guin, Steering the Craft (opens in a new tab)
Mary Karr: “Don, I think I’m writing a bad book.”

Don DeLillo: “Well, who doesn’t?”
Mary Karr, recounting a conversation with Don DeLillo on The Tim Ferriss Show, episode 479 (opens in a new tab)
“When you write a story, you're telling yourself the story,” he said. “When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story.”
John Gould, as quoted by Stephen King in On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (opens in a new tab)
“What's in the box?”

“Pain.”
Frank Herbert, Dune
“Have you never thought how danger must surround power as shadow does light?”
Ogion, in Ursula K. Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea
“…and on a grassplot a fountain played under young trees in the sunlight.”
Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea
“Without all the drugs you can really feel it. Time escaping you.”
The Woman in Cabin 10 (film)
“It was a merry night and he was joyful to be there in the warmth and merriment, keeping festival with his companions.”
Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea
“Red sank to ashes in the west, and ash-gray sank to black.”
Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea
Regal glared at me, but I dared not move.

“What will you make of him?”

Regal looked perplexed. “Him? It’s the Fitz. Chivalry’s bastard. Sneaking and thieving as always.”

“Fool.” King Shrewd smiled, but his eyes remained flinty. The Fool, thinking himself addressed, smiled sweetly. “Are your ears stopped with wax? Do you hear nothing I say? I asked you, not ‘what do you make of him?’ but ‘what will you make of him?’”
Robin Hobb, Assassin's Apprentice
Listening, reading, and seeing the arts will help you in your other arts.
Christopher Frewin