Writing Quotes

Browse through our collection of quotes tagged with Writing.

For once the disease of reading has laid upon the system it

For once the disease of reading has laid upon the system it weakens so that it falls an easy prey to that other scourge which dwells in the ink pot and festers in the quill. The wretch takes to writing.

Books Reading Writing

Child, to say the very thing you really mean, the whole of i

Child, to say the very thing you really mean, the whole of it, nothing more or less or other than what you really mean; that's the whole art and joy of words.

Writing Writing Craft C S Lewis Till We Have Faces

A successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is

A successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it.

Humor Funny Books Writing Wit On Writing

A little talent is a good thing to have if you want to be a

A little talent is a good thing to have if you want to be a writer. But the only real requirement is the ability to remember every scar.

Writing Writing Craft Life Experience

A man who is not born with the novel-writing gift has a trou

A man who is not born with the novel-writing gift has a troublesome time of it when he tries to build a novel. I know this from experience. He has no clear idea of his story; in fact he has no story. He merely has some people in his mind, and an incident or two, also a locality, and he trusts he can plunge those people into those incidents with interesting results. So he goes to work. To write a novel? No--that is a thought which comes later; in the beginning he is only proposing to tell a little tale, a very little tale, a six-page tale. But as it is a tale which he is not acquainted with, and can only find out what it is by listening as it goes along telling itself, it is more than apt to go on and on and on till it spreads itself into a book. I know about this, because it has happened to me so many times.

Writing

You can make anything by writing.

You can make anything by writing.

Writing

I see things, that's all. Write enough stories and every sha

I see things, that's all. Write enough stories and every shadow on the floor looks like a footprint; every line in the dirt like a secret message.

Writing

Borges said there are only four stories to tell: a love stor

Borges said there are only four stories to tell: a love story between two people, a love story between three people, the struggle for power and the voyage. All of us writers rewrite these same stories ad infinitum.

Power Love Writing Story

I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the mornin

I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.

Poetry Writing

My very small part in WATCHMEN is that, every now and then,

My very small part in WATCHMEN is that, every now and then, Alan would phone me: ''Neil, you're an educated man. Where does it say...''He would need a quote from the Bible, or an essay about owls. I was his occasional research assistant.

Writing

When you have a good romance, find ways to make their lives

When you have a good romance, find ways to make their lives miserable and hellish...Do you think 'Titanic' would have been so popular if they had both lived? Not a prayer.

Orson Scott Card

Writing

I'm simply interested in what is going to happen next. I don

I'm simply interested in what is going to happen next. I don't think I can control my life or my writing. Every other writer I know feels he is steering himself, and I don't have that feeling. I don't have that sort of control. I'm simply becoming. I'm startled that I became a writer.

Life Control Writing Insight

To be a well-favored man is the gift of fortune, but to writ

To be a well-favored man is the gift of fortune, but to write or read comes by nature

William Shakespeare

Nature Reading Fortune Writing Gifts

I write description in longhand because that's hardest for m

I write description in longhand because that's hardest for me and you're closer to the paper when you work by hand, but I use the typewriter for dialogue because people speak like a typewriter works.

Ernest Hemingway

Writing

(W)riters are often the worst judges of what they have writt

(W)riters are often the worst judges of what they have written.

Writing

The author must keep his mouth shut when his work starts to

The author must keep his mouth shut when his work starts to speak.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Writing

Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt

Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty. There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.

Morality Books Reading Writing

I could not sit seriously down to write a serious Romance un

I could not sit seriously down to write a serious Romance under any other motive than to save my life

Writing Be True To Yourself

For it would seem - her case proved it - that we write, not

For it would seem - her case proved it - that we write, not with the fingers, but with the whole person. The nerve which controls the pen winds itself about every fibre of our being, threads the heart, pierces the liver.

Writing

Travel in contested territory. Hard-working writing and read

Travel in contested territory. Hard-working writing and reading when safely home, in the knowledge that an amusing friend is later coming to dinner.

Christopher Hitchens

Travel Friends Reading Writing Dinner