A Quote by William Faulkner

the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat

William Faulkner

Quote Topics

About Agony Alone Because Conflict Good Good Writing Heart Human Human Heart Itself Make Only Problems Sweat Which Worth Writing

Quote Author

William Faulkner
American - Writer
September 25, 1897 - July 6, 1962

Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat. He must learn them again.

William Faulkner

The only thing worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself

William Faulkner

You can make bad writing 'OK,' but... you really need to start with a good script and with characters that are three-dimensional and with great dialogue. It's a difficult lesson to learn because good writing is hard to come by, but it's definitely worth chasing.

Corey Stoll

Write plays that matter. Raise the stakes. Shout, yell, holler, but make yourself heard. It's time for playwrights to reclaim the theatre. We do that by speaking from the heart about the things that matter most to us. If a play isn't worth dying for, maybe it isn't worth writing.

Terrence McNally

What I hope my writing reflects... is a sense of the connections between all human beings... and a different perspective on the true nature of courage. For me, those are things worth exploring and writing about.

Chris Crutcher

At last I understood that the way over, or through this dilemma, the unease at writing about 'petty personal problems' was to recognize that nothing is personal, in the sense that it is uniquely one's own. Writing about oneself, one is writing about others, since your problems, pains, pleasures, emotions—and your extraordinary and remarkable ideas—can't be yours alone. [...] Growing up is after all only the understanding that one's unique and incredible experience is what everyone shares.

Doris Lessing

Some people measure the worth of good actions only by their natural qualities or their difficulty, giving the preference solely to what is conspicuous or brilliant. Such men forget that Christian virtues, which are God's inspiration, should be viewed from the side of grace, not that of nature. The dignity or difficulty of a good action certainly affects what is technically called its accidental worth, but all essential worth must come from love alone.

Jean-Pierre Camus

I'm always writing. A friend of mine once said, 'You avoid re-writing by writing.' Which is kind of a good point, because re-writing seems to be mostly about craft, and writing is just, like, getting out your passion on a piece of paper.

Cameron Crowe

There are only three things which make life worth living: to be writing a tolerably good book, to be in a dinner party of six, and to be traveling south with someone whom your conscience permits you to love.

Cyril Connolly

I enjoy writing, sometimes; I think that most writers will tell you about the agony of writing more than the joy of writing, but writing is what I was meant to do.

Leon Uris

I really believed that anything at all was worth writing about if you cared about it enough, and that the best and only necessary justification for writing any particular story was that I cared about it.

Susan Orlean

The things worth writing about, and the things worth reading about, are the things that feel almost beyond description at the start and are, because of that, frightening.

Douglas Coupland

I've always taken that as my guiding principle and the rest is just set dressing. You can have dragons in it, or aliens and starships, or a western about a gunslinger, or even literary fiction, and ultimately you're still writing about the human heart in conflict with itself.

George R. R. Martin

If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing well. If it is worth having, it is worth waiting for. If it is worth attaining, it is worth fighting for. If it is worth experiencing, it is worth putting aside time for.