Writers can be a dark lot at times…

Terry Pratchett, who has many so many of us smile, and laugh, and filled us with joy once told his friend, compatriot and occasional co-conspirator, Neil Gaiman, that he wrote not from joy but from a deep-seated well of anger. It was, he felt, anger that made him the writer he was, a dark rage that drove him to write. In this anger, he was not alone, there is a dark twist to this set of quotes. But from the dark recesses of a writer soul beauty can be born… Or perhaps just pretentiousness, you’ll have to decide that one for yourselves…

“Writing is easy: just stare at the screen of your computer until a tear drops on your keyboard.” ~ Paulo Coelho

“I write for the same reason I breathe-because if I didn’t, I would die.” ~ Isaac Asimov

“If I’m writing, at least I don’t feel as paralyzed.” ~ Laura Goode,

“I need solitude for my writing; not ‘like a hermit’ – that wouldn’t be enough – but like a dead man.” ~ Franz Kafka

“The world is a hellish place, and bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering.” ~ Tom Waits

“If the novel is dead, I’m a necrophiliac.” ~ Tiffany Madison

“Throw up into your typewriter every morning. Clean up every noon.” ~ Raymond Chandler

“Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the backyard and shot it.” ~Truman Capote

“What is your advice to young writers?”
“Drink, fuck and smoke plenty of cigarettes.” ~ Charles Bukowski,

“I don’t think all writers are sad, she said.
I think it’s the other way around—all sad people write.” ~ Lang Leav

“Writing a book is a blood sport. If it doesn’t hurt when you’re done, you’re probably doing something wrong.” ~ Kevis Hendrickson

“To write is your last resort when you’ve betrayed someone.” ~ Jean Genet

“I think horror, when done well, is one of the most direct and honest ways to get to the core of the human experience because terror reduces all of us to our most authentic forms.” ~Alistair Cross

“The way to write is to throw your body at the mark when your arrows are spent.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Happy children do not seem to grow up to be writers.” ~ Piers Anthony

*cough so no pretension at all in that lot… But as an occasional collector of quotes, I can’t deny I am occasionally drawn to the darker ones rather than the just plain inspirational. But then I am a writer myself, and the dark is an old friend…

Finally, a last word from old tentacle hugger himself…

“At night, when the objective world has slunk back into its cavern and left dreamers to their own, there come inspirations and capabilities impossible at any less magical and quiet hour. No one knows whether or not he is a writer unless he has tried writing at night.” ~ H.P. Lovecraft

Earlier posts on writer quotes…   words of wisdom  further words of wisdom  WoW3 wise words 

and one on miss-quoting, Misquoting Kipling