7 F. Scott Fitzgerald Quotes on Writing

F. Scott Fitzgerald quotes on writing

1. All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.

37. This somewhat unpleasant tale, published as a novelette in the 'Smart Set' in July, 1920, relates a series of events which took place in the spring of the previous year. Each of the three events made a great impression upon me. In life they were unrelated, except by the general hysteria of that spring which inaugurated the Age of Jazz, but in my story I have tried, unsuccessfully I fear, to weave them into a pattern-a pattern which would give the effect of those months in New York as they appeared to at least one member of what was then the younger generation.

41. One well-known critic has been pleased to like this extravaganza better than anything I have written. Personally I prefer 'The Offshore Pirate.' But, to tamper slightly with Lincoln: If you like this sort of thing, this, possibly, is the sort of thing you'll like.

53. Of this story I can say that it came to me in an irresistible form, crying to be written. It will be accused perhaps of being a mere piece of sentimentality, but, as I saw it, it was a great deal more. If, therefore, it lacks the ring of sincerity, or even, of tragedy, the fault rests not with the theme but with my handling of it.

91. You don't write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.

97. Fitzgerald was a better just plain writer than all of us put together. Just words writing.

98. The real Scott is to be found in his notebooks and working papers, where he elaborated so patiently at turning the mess of his life to gold. 'To observe one must be unwary,' he wrote, so he took experience straight without a notebook. But he later hoarded it like a miser and pored over it like a monk illuminating a manuscript and produced enduring work. When a writer explores emotions to danger point like Scott, it is worse than philistine to talk about weakness of character. The whole moral test is in the books. The Great Gatsby and Tender Is the Night are all the character reference a writer could want.