Satisfaction Of Writing Quotes & Sayings

I wish to try my hand at a novel," he said. "Just scribbling, I assure you, but it strikes me as such a noble art, requiring none of the monetary resources of opera or drama, nor the erudition of poetry. Perchance a publisher could be found. I'd be satisfied by the printing of even a score of copies, if only to hold the bound work in my hands. It gives a unique satisfaction, I assume, the writing of a novel. — Kyle Muntz

It is true that a writer writes first to please himself and that his own satisfaction with what he has done is perhaps his greatest satisfaction. But writing is a means of communication. It is not enough to speak; you must also be heard. The message must be received and understood. — Christopher Milne

Being an editor has been a source of great satisfaction, but writing is the thing I truly love. — Bill Keller

Another important way in which the erotic connection functions is the open and fearless underlining of my capacity for joy. In the way my body stretches to music and opens into response, hearkening to its deepest rhythms, so every level upon which I sense also opens to the erotically satisfying experience, whether it is dancing, building a bookcase, writing a poem, examining an idea. That self-connection shared is a measure of the joy which I know myself to be capable of feeling, a reminder of my capacity for feeling. And that deep and irreplaceable knowledge of my capacity for joy comes to demand from all of my life that it be lived within the knowledge that such satisfaction is possible, and does not have to be called marriage, nor god, nor an afterlife. — Audre Lorde

The idea of taking a song, envisioning the overall sound in my head and then bringing the arrangement to life in the studio ... well, that gives me satisfaction like nothing else ... My state of being has been elevated, because I've been exercising, writing songs ... No masterpiece ever came overnight. A person's masterpiece is something that you nurture along. — Brian Wilson

To all the talented young men who wander about feeling that there is nothing in the world for them to do, I should say: 'Give up trying to write, and, instead, try not to write. Go out into the world; become a pirate, a king in Borneo, a labourer in Soviet Russia; give yourself an existence in which the satisfaction of elementary physical needs will occupy almost all your energies.' I do not recommend this course of action to everyone, but only to those who suffer from the disease which Mr Krutch diagnoses. I believe that, after some years of such an existence, the ex-intellectual will fin that in spite of is efforts he can no longer refrain from writing, and when this time comes his writing will not seem to him futile. — Bertrand Russell

Writing poetry is the only form of literary labour which gives me entire satisfaction. — Peter Porter

A skillful literary artist has constructed a tale. If wise, he has not fashioned his thoughts to accommodate his incidents; but having conceived, with deliberate care, a certain unique or single effect to be wrought out, he then invents as may best aid him in establishing this preconceived effect. If his very initial sentence tend not to the outbringing of this effect, then he has failed in his first step. In the whole composition there should be no words written, of which the tendency, direct or indirect, is not to the one pre-established design. And by such means, with such care and skill, a picture is at length painted which leaves in the mind of him who contemplates it with a kindred art, a sense of the fullest satisfaction. The idea of the tale has been presented unblemished because undisturbed: and this is an end unattainable by the novel. Undue brevity is just as exceptionable here as in the poem; but undue length is yet more to be avoided. — Edgar Allan Poe

... Writing is something that you can never do as well as it can be done. It is a perpetual challenge and it is more difficult than anything else that I have ever done - so I do it. And it makes me happy when I do it well. — Ernest Hemingway,

The deepest satisfaction of writing is precisely that it opens up new spaces within us of which we were not aware before we started to write. To write is to embark on a journey whose final destination we do not know. — Henri Nouwen

I've always had great satisfaction out of writing the plays. I've not always had great satisfaction out of seeing them produced-although often I've had satisfaction there. When things go well in production, on opening there's no nicer feeling in the world-what could be nicer than watching an audience respond? You can't that from a book. It's a fine feeling to walk into the theater and see living people respond to something you've done. — Lillian Hellman

I feel satisfaction at the end of the day when I've written a scene that I really like or when I write a good line of dialogue that I read out to my wife or something like that. But there's also days where it's just bloody agony and I go, 'ugh, this is such crap! Why did I think I had any talent? — George R R Martin

I reached a point where I'd watched enough directors do the job that I felt I understood it. And it's not that I'm a slow learner and it took me this long; I also was enjoying writing, and I still enjoy writing - I get tremendous satisfaction out of the writing end of it. — Dan Gilroy

In my meditations, I find that nothing in life counts more than the happiness we can give others, the good that we can do. This is what we must teach our children, to think of others more than they think of themselves, for it is in this way they will find the most noble satisfaction of all. ~ Maurice Drouhin writing to his wife from prison in 1941 — Don Kladstrup

O flowers, country, love, inaction,
O fields! I am your devotee!
I always note with satisfaction
Onegin's difference from me,
Lest somewhere a sarcastic reader
Or publisher or such-like breeder
Of complicated calumny
Discerns my physiognomy
And shamelessly repeats the fable
That I have crudely versified
Myself like Byron, bard of pride,
As if we were no longer able
To write a poem and discuss
A subject not concerning us. — Alexander Pushkin

It is difficult for me to commit to an manuscript. Once, I get finished writing it. I get this feeling of adrenaline, and satisfaction. This is when the amusement begins, for the writer's side of me. — Mary Sage Nguyen

If a book has a predictable storyline or familiar situations, there's little satisfaction for me in writing it. A woman deciding which man she'll spend her life with? I've read that story a million times, but a stepmother deciding which of her children she'll save in a freak accident? Now that's a challenge. — Jillian Medoff

Even the small satisfaction of writing letters was denied us. It came to this: not only had the town ceased to be in touch with the rest of the world by normal means of communication, but also - according to a second notification - all correspondence was forbidden, to obviate the risk of letters' carrying infection outside the town. — Albert Camus

A work is never completed except by some accident such as weariness, satisfaction, the need to deliver, or death: for, in relation to who or what is making it, it can only be one stage in a series of inner transformations. — Paul Valery

Yes, there is a Nirvanah; it is leading your sheep to a green pasture, and in putting your child to sleep, and in writing the last line of your poem — Kahlil Gibran

I love a lots of things about being a writer! The thrill of seeing characters come to life, and the satisfaction as a story starts to fall into place. Independence not being answerable to anyone but myself or tied to a nine-to-five routine is very important to me, too. And of course, it's great being a writer when it comes to parties! In my experience, most people are fascinated by the process of writing and the whole idea of romantic fiction, even if they have never read any. — Jessica Hart

I like to write short stories more because I never met a writer who wasn't lazy. And a short story is, by its very definition, short. It is something that generally you can turn out in a week to two weeks depending on how well it goes for you. But, at the same time, it gives the same satisfaction of creating a complete world. — Stephen King

Which, of course, isn't the point of writing - but it would be nice if, along with the creative satisfaction of writing and seeing my work in print, I could do more than merely scrape a living. Okay, moaning over. — Eric Brown

I write because I like to write. I find joy in the texture and tone and rhythm of words. It is a satisfaction like that which follows good and shared love. — John Steinbeck

I wouldn't say the purpose of making art is to enjoy it necessarily. For me, it happens to be the thing I enjoy the most. I don't even know what the purpose of art is really, I just know that is something that makes me feel satisfied in a way that other things don't. That's all I know, that's why I like to write songs and films or draw. I just like to make things and somehow I find it gives me a feeling of satisfaction that I can't find in other areas of my life. — Sean Lennon

People who seek to serve the community end up falsifying their work, she wrote, whether the work is writing a novel or baking bread, because they are not single- mindedly focused on the task at hand. But if you serve the work - if you perform each task to its utmost perfection - then you will experience the deep satisfaction of craftsmanship and you will end up serving the community more richly than you could have consciously planned. — Dorothy L. Sayers

What immense satisfaction it must be to fashion a story like [Maupassant's]! One must say 'fashion' because it is not merely writing, but massing and cutting away like a sculptor, chiseling lean and clear. And to put one's work confidently in the crucible of Time; to know that in six perfect pages is the finest form of one's idea: This satisfaction is the only true reward of the artist, and this his highest possible joy on Earth. — Patricia Highsmith

Poem Written in a Copy of Beowulf
At various times, I have asked myself what reasons
moved me to study, while my night came down,
without particular hope of satisfaction,
the language of the blunt-tongued Anglo-Saxons.
Used up by the years, my memory
loses its grip on words that I have vainly
repeated and repeated. My life in the same way
weaves and unweaves its weary history.
Then I tell myself: it must be that the soul
has some secret, sufficient way of knowing
that it is immortal, that its vast, encompassing
circle can take in all, can accomplish all.
Beyond my anxiety, beyond this writing,
the universe waits, inexhaustible, inviting. — Jorge Luis Borges

A writer writes knowing that nothing else will elicit the same kind of satisfaction and personal triumph as molding the written word into a reader's great experience. — Richelle E. Goodrich

When I was speaking about communicating, I meant that the listener - we have to reach the listener; otherwise, of course, you're writing the piece, as I say, only for the satisfaction of seeing it on the paper for yourself, and then it ends right there. — Leo Ornstein

And yet on that bench at Jacobacci, I was glad I had left everyone else behind. Although this was a town with a main street and a railway station, and people with dogs and electric lights it was near enough to the end of the earth to give me the impression that I was a solitary explorer in a strange land. That illusion (which was an illusion in the South Pole and at the headwaters of the Nile) was enough of a satisfaction to me to make me want to go forward. — Paul Theroux

With a click, my novel would be born; it would come out into the light suddenly transformed from the hypothetical text composed in my imagination into finished, tangible thing with a real and independent existence. The moment of clicking on the print button always gave rise to strange and powerful ambivalence
a combination of self-satisfaction, gloom and anxiety. Self-satisfaction for having finished writing the book. Gloom because taking my leave of the characters has the same effect on me as when a group of friends have to depart. And anxiety, perhaps because I am on the verge of delivering up into other people's hands something that I treasure. — Alaa Al Aswany

Writing does produce a very unique satisfaction. There are times when I'm writing that it's frustrating or appalling or difficult, but when it goes well, it goes really well, and there is a feeling of rightness, like I'm doing the thing I was meant to do, almost in a mystical way, like I'm at an appropriate angle to the world. — Rachel Kushner

My most important goal as a romance writer is to satisfy readers by creating memorable characters, offering insights on life, and, most of all, touching hearts.
I derive the greatest satisfaction when I hear from readers who have been genuinely moved by my books and/or who identify with the characters or situation. I also confess to reveling in the feeling I get when I type "The End" on a manuscript. — Laura Abbot

I don't associate work with feelings of satisfaction. Rather, guilt, frustration, and resentment of people who write better than I do. — Garrison Keillor

Eaten up with guilt, shame, fears and insecurities and obtaining, if he's lucky, a barely perceptible physical feeling, the male is, nonetheless, obsessed with screwing; he'll swim a river of snot, wade nostril-deep through a mile of vomit, if he thinks there'll be a friendly pussy awaiting him. He'll screw a woman he despises, any snaggle-toothed hag, and, further, pay for the opportunity. Why? Relieving physical tension isn't the answer, as masturbation suffices for that. It's not ego satisfaction; that doesn't explain screwing corpses and babies. — Valerie Solanas

I never had any frustration about writing uncredited. I always felt that the satisfaction of doing it was in the doing of it, really, and getting recognised by the small number of people that know what you did. — Tom Stoppard

Domesticity is the enemy of art. I don't know if that's true. You can write good happy songs. So, I don't think it's necessarily happiness. But I think self-satisfaction is maybe the enemy. It's kind of better to think, "Tomorrow night I'm gonna sing it better." There is this forward effort. It feels to me right, it feels human. — Paul McCartney

Poetry is only the highest eloquence of passion, the most vivid form of expression that can be given to our conception of anything, whether pleasurable or painful, mean or dignified, delightful or distressing. It is the perfect coincidence of the image and the words with the feeling we have, and of which we cannot get rid in any other way, that gives an instant "satisfaction to the thought." This is equally the origin of wit and fancy, of comedy and tragedy, of the sublime and pathetic. — William Hazlitt

The physical business of writing is unpleasant to me, but the psychic satisfaction of discharging bad ideas in worse English makes me forget it. — H.L. Mencken

When you write, you want fame, fortune and personal satisfaction. You want to write what you want to write and feel it's good, and you want this to go on for hundreds of years. You're not likely ever to get all these things, and you're not likely to give up writing and commit suicide if you don't, but that is
and should be
your goal. Anything else is kind of piddling. — Dashiell Hammett

People talk about the pain of writing, but very few people talk about the pleasure and satisfaction. — Paul Theroux

When a writer first begins to write, he or she feels the same
first thrill of achievement that the young gambler or oboe
player feels: winning a little, losing some, the gambler sees the
glorious possibilities, exactly as the young oboist feels an indescribable
thrill when he gets a few phrases to sound like real
music, phrases implying an infinite possibility for satisfaction
and self-expression. As long as the gambler or oboist is only
playing at being a gambler or oboist, everything seems possible.
But when the day comes that he sets his mind on becoming a professional, suddenly he realizes how much there is to learn, how little he knows. — John Gardner

Consulting maps can diminish the wanderlust that they awaken,as the act of looking at them can replace the act of travel. But looking at maps is much more than an act of aesthetic replacement. Anyone who opens an atlas wants everything at once, without limits
the whole world. This longing will always be great, far greater than any satisfaction to be had by attaining what is desired. Give me an atlas over a guidebook any day. There is no more poetic book in the world. — Judith Schalansky

My reason for writing stories is to give myself the satisfaction of visualising more clearly and detailedly and stably the vague, elusive, fragmentary impressions of wonder, beauty, and adventurous expectancy which are conveyed to me by certain sights (scenic, architectural, atmospheric, etc.), ideas, occurrences, and images encountered in art and literature. — H.P. Lovecraft

Letters were first invented for consoling such solitary wretches as myself. Having lost the substantial pleasures of seeing and possessing you, I shall in some measure compensate this loss by the satisfaction I shall find in your writing. — Heloise

There is the first satisfaction of arranging it on a bit of paper; after many, many false tries, false moves, finally you have the sentence you recognize as the one you are looking for. — Vladimir Nabokov

There were people whose only interest in life was writing letters. To the newspapers, to authors, to strangers, to City Councils, to the police. It did not much matter to whom; the satisfaction of writing seemed to be all. — Josephine Tey

It's an interesting job, it's a fascinating job, I can't imagine anything that would have given me more satisfaction, and not everything I did was awful, but it was just writing another story in a world that's full of stories. — Dennis O'Neil

I enjoy writing, I enjoy my house, my family and, more than anything I enjoy the feeling of seeing each day used to the full to actually produce something. The end. — Michael Palin

Would you not like to try all sorts of lives - one is so very small - but that is the satisfaction of writing - one can impersonate so many people. — Katherine Mansfield

Over time I learned that there are two very different satisfactions that you can have in your life. One is the satisfaction of becoming skilled at something. It almost doesn't matter what the terrain is. There is a deep, soul-feeding resonance in mastery itself, whether in teaching, writing a complicated software program, coaching a baseball team, or marshalling a group of people to start a new business ... — Atul Gawande