Isaac Asimov on Writing
Browse 11 quotations attributed to Isaac Asimov, catalogued under writing, with dates where available.
This page displays 11 quotations attributed to Isaac Asimov and filed under "writing" in QuoteLineage. The selection is ordered by stored importance and quality scores, not citation counts. A topic label describes how an entry is catalogued; it does not establish the theme's importance in the author's work.
Attributed to Isaac Asimov, entry #182171: "It is my own experience ... that commentators are far more ingenious at finding meaning than authors are at inserting it."
Attributed to Isaac Asimov, entry #194628: "There is less trouble and trauma involved in writing a new piece than in trying to salvage an unsatisfactory old one."
11 Quotes by Isaac Asimov on Writing
"It is my own experience ... that commentators are far more ingenious at finding meaning than authors are at inserting it."
"There is less trouble and trauma involved in writing a new piece than in trying to salvage an unsatisfactory old one."
"If you're going to write a story, avoid contemporary references. They date a story and they have no staying power."
"How I want a drink, alcoholic of course, after the heavy lectures involving quantum mechanics!"
"If anyone can be considered the greatest writer who ever lived, it is Shakespeare."
"How can the net amount of entropy of the universe be massively decreased?"
"It was easy to cover up ignorance by the mystical word “intuition."
"From my close observation of writers … they fall into two groups: 1) those who bleed copiously and visibly at any bad review, and 2) those who bleed copiously and secretly at any bad review."
"When you write a short story ... you had better know the ending first. The end of a story is only the end to the reader. To the writer, it's the beginning. If you don't know exactly where you're going every minute you're writing, you'll never get there — or anywhere."
"Asimov: I don't know of any science fiction writer who really attempts to be a prophet. Such authors accomplish their tasks not by being correct in their predictions, necessarily, but merely by hammering home—in story after story—the notion that life is going to be different."
"Writing is hard work. The fact that I love doing it doesn't make it less hard work. People who love tennis will sweat themselves to exhaustion playing it, and the love of the game doesn't stop the sweating. The casual assumption that writers are unemployed bums because they don't go to the office and don't have a boss is something every writer has to live with. I have never known a writer who hasn't suffered as a result of this, hasn't resented it, and hasn't dreamed of murdering the next person who says "Boy, you've sure got it made. You just sit there and toss off a story or something whenever you feel like it."