A Quote by Anna Quindlen

Writing seems to be the only profession people imagine you can do by thinking about doing it.

Anna Quindlen

Quote Topics

About Doing Imagine Only People Profession Seems Thinking Writing

Quote Author

Anna Quindlen
American - Journalist
Born: July 8, 1953

When people speak to me of the torment of writing, I can think only of what it was like before I wrote: once writing meant writing and not thinking about writing, I knew nothing of any torment.

Howard Jacobson

What profession is more trying than that of author? After you finish a piece of work it only seems good to you for a few weeks; or if it seems good at all you are convinced that it is the last you will be able to write; and if it seems bad you wonder whether everything you have done isn’t poor stuff really; and it is one kind of agony while you are writing, and another kind when you aren’t.

T. S. Eliot

Planning to write is not writing. Outlining, researching, talking to people about what you're doing - none of that is writing. Writing is writing. Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.

E. L. Doctorow

Cognitive consonance is what writing in the Age of the idiot is all about. The key to success in the scribbling profession is to strike the right balance of mediocrity in writing and thinking, which invariably entails echoing one of two party lines, poorly.

Ilana Mercer

To me, writing is not a profession. You might as well call living a profession. Or having children. Anything you can't help doing.

Vicki Baum

My office-hour reading is fairly ad hoc: I generally read whatever seems relevant to what I'm editing, writing, or thinking about writing.

Bret Stephens

I don't feel comfortable doing interviews. My profession is music, and writing songs. That's what I do. I like to do it, but I hate to talk about it.

Van Morrison

I loved reading and writing, and teaching was the most exalted profession I could imagine.

Frank McCourt

There's no lack of writers writing novels in America, about America. Therefore, it seems to me it would be wasteful for me to add to that huge number of people writing here when there are so few people writing about somewhere else.

Chinua Achebe

The funny thing about writing is, although you are writing about an experience which only you have had, you are trying to welcome other people into it, and there are ways I think of doing this, and one of them is through the senses, through the sounds and the smells.

Ronald Frame

Planning to write is not writing. Outlining, researching, talking to people about what you're doing, none of that is writing. Writing is writing.

E. L. Doctorow

I think in any profession, in general, you always imagine yourself at the top of it. And I'm not trying to say I'm at the top of my profession, but I've seen what the top people do and what the top people live like. And that's definitely something I want to be a part of.

Jacob Batalon

Writing is one way to go about thinking, and the practice and habit of writing not only drain the mind but supply it, too.

E. B. White

I think a lot of people are very good, but I don't think anybody could do my rhythm. I was thinking, "If you want my rhythm" - and when I was writing, I was writing them for myself - "why am I watching another actor doing what I should be doing?" It was just a really unpleasant experience.

Jake M. Johnson

I think film writing, you're thinking in pictures, and stage writing, you're thinking in dialogue. In film writing, it's also, you only get so many words, so everything has to earn its place in a really economical way. I think for stage writing, you have more leeway.