Never forget what I believe was observed to you by Coleridge, that every great and original writer, in proportion as he is great and original, must himself create the taste by which he is to be relished. William Wordsworth, letter to Lady Beaumont 21st May 1807
Everyone was saying to himself, ‘This writing business. Pencils and what-not. Over-rated, if you ask me. Silly stuff. Nothing in it.’ A A Milne, Winnie-the Pooh 1926
I begin with writing the first sentence – and trusting to Almighty God for the second. Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
Writing, when properly managed (as you may be sure I think mine is) is but a different name for conversation. ibid.
I have undertaken, you see, to write not only my life, but my opinions also; hoping and expecting that your knowledge of my character, and of what kind of a mortal I am, by the one, would give you a better relish for the other: As you proceed further with me, the slight acquaintance which is now beginning betwixt us, will grow into familiarity; and that, unless one of us is in fault, will terminate in friendship. ibid.
To say in print what she thinks is the last thing the woman novelist or journalist is so rash as to attempt ... Her publishers are not women. Elizabeth Robins, 1908
To write one’s memoirs is to speak ill of everybody except oneself. Henri Philippe Petain, Observer 26th May 1946
Three hours a day will produce as much as a man ought to write. Anthony Trollope, Autobiography, 1883
Would you convey my compliments to the purist who reads your proofs and tell him or her that I write in a sort of broken-down patois which is something like the way a Swiss waiter talks, and that when I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split is so it will stay split. Raymond Chandler, letter to Edward Weeks 14th January 1947
If my books had been any worse, I should not have been invited to Hollywood, and if they had been any better, I should not have come. Raymond Chandler
You will have written exceptionally well if, by skilful arrangement of your words, you have made an ordinary one seem original. Horace
Of writing well the source and fountainhead of wise thinking. Horace
For a writer, going back home means back to the pen, pencil, and typewriter – and the blank, implacable sheet of white paper. Paul Scott, English novelist
If writing did not exist, what terrible depressions we should suffer from. Sei Shonagon
A writer’s ambition should be ... to trade a hundred contemporary readers for ten readers in ten years’ time and for one reader in a hundred years. Arthur Koestler, cited New York Times Review 1st April 1951
The prime responsibility lays with being able to tell people what they did not wish to hear. George Orwell
As I write, highly civilised human beings are flying overhead trying to kill me. George Orwell
A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1) What am I trying to say? 2) What words will express it? 3) What image or idiom will make it clearer? 4) Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? George Orwell, Politics and the English Language
Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print; never use a long word where a short one will do; if it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out; never use the passive where you can use the active; never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent; break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous. ibid.
For a creative writer possession of the ‘truth’ is less important than emotional sincerity. George Orwell
When one reads any strongly individual piece of writing, one has the impression of seeing a face somewhere behind the page. It is not necessarily the actual face of the writer. George Orwell
Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic Socialism, as I understand it. George Orwell, Why I Write
Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. ibid.
You say you go in for writing. Writing is bosh. There is only one way to make money at writing, and that is to marry a publisher’s daughter. George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London
‘This past is a curious thing. It’s with you all the time. I suppose an hour never passes without you’re thinking of things that happened ten or twenty years ago. And yet most of the time it’s got no reality; it’s just a set of facts you learned like a lot of stuff in the history books. Then, some chance or sound or smell, especially smell, sets you going. And the past doesn’t merely come back to you: you are actually in the past.’ Arena: George Orwell I: Such Were the Joys, BBC 1983
George Orwell: One of the most remarkable figures of twentieth-century literature. For Orwell was not one of those writers whose life disappeared into his work; his history is a history of the troubled times in which he lived. ibid.
‘From a very early age, perhaps from the age of five or six, I knew that when I grew up I should be a writer.’ ibid.
‘He was one of those boys who seemed born old.’ ibid. teacher
‘The truth is that kids aren’t in any way poetic. They’re merely savage little animals. Except that no animal is a quarter as selfish.’ ibid.
We know almost nothing of his life in Paris. ibid.
By 1933 Eric Blair, now George Orwell, had published his first book, Down and Out in Paris and in London. Arena: George Orwell II: Road to Wigan Pier
‘I don’t think he liked his fellow man at all.’ ibid. Humphrey Dakin, 1971
£500 to write a book about the depressed areas of the north. ibid.
122,253. With an advance from his publisher, he settled down to try to write … ‘She [wife] was very pretty. Very intelligent. Very philosophical. Awfully good company.’ ibid.
‘He went to Spain because he thought we must fight fascism.’ Arena: George Orwell III: Homage to Catalonia, village neighbour
The civil war in Spain broke out on 18th July 1936. General Franco’s attack on the beleaguered Spanish republic had angered a great many English intellectuals on the left. ibid.
For Orwell, after his experience in the Spanish Civil War, totalitarianism had become the enemy. He saw the coming war in Europe as a conflict between two distorted ideologies: Nazi fascism and Stalinist communism. Arena: George Orwell IV: The Lion & the Unicorn
‘One must above all die fighting.’ ibid.
‘The goose step for instance is one of the most terrible sights in the world.’ ibid.
28th August: ‘I am now definitely an employee of the BBC.’ ibid.
Orwell was denied any pleasure from the victory celebrations at the end of World War II. He and his wife Eileen had adopted a baby boy Richard but Orwell was separated from them working as a war correspondent when she was suddenly taken into hospital with what appeared to be a routine operation. Arena: George Orwell V: 1984
Isolated and angry in a world of gloom and shortages, Orwell struggled on alone with his adopted son. He sought female companionship with the desperation of the very lonely. ibid.
‘He had quite extensive disease of both lungs.’ ibid. Dr James Williamson
Sometimes I think I wasn’t born but I just came out of an ink blot. Arena: Hilary Mantel: Return to Wolf Hall, BBC 2020
‘It causes me to reflect on different layers of reality – fact, history, myth – how they merge into one.’ ibid.
Of every four words I write, I strike out three. Nicolas Boileau
It is splendid to be a great writer, and to put men into the frying pan of your words and make them pop like chestnuts. Gustave Flaubert, 1821-80