Writing Quotes

Browse through our collection of quotes tagged with Writing.

One should never use exclamation points in writing. It is li

One should never use exclamation points in writing. It is like laughing at your own joke.

Advice Writing Clever Exclamation Point

Green in nature is one thing, green in literature another. N

Green in nature is one thing, green in literature another. Nature and letters seem to have a natural antipathy; bring them together and they tear each other to pieces.

Poetry Nature Drama Writing Literature Antipathy Green

The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisi

The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.

Life Mystery Writing Creative

A writer off-guard since the materials with which he works a

A writer off-guard since the materials with which he works are so dangerous can expect agony as quick as a thunderclap.

Writing Writers

The test of any good fiction is that you should care somethi

The test of any good fiction is that you should care something for the characters; the good to succeed, the bad to fail. The trouble with most fiction is that you want them all to land in hell together, as quickly as possible.

Writing

Reading takes time, and the glass teat takes too much of it.

Reading takes time, and the glass teat takes too much of it.

Reading Writing

My books are water; those of the great geniuses is wine. Eve

My books are water; those of the great geniuses is wine. Everybody drinks water.

Books Writing

Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for wr

Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer's loneliness, but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work a

Ernest Hemingway

Writing

As with all other aspects of the narrative art, you will imp

As with all other aspects of the narrative art, you will improve with practice, but practice will never make you perfect. Why should it? What fun would that be?

Motivational Writing

Description is what makes the reader a sensory participant i

Description is what makes the reader a sensory participant in the story. Good description is a learned skill,one of the prime reasons you cannot succeed unless you read a lot and write a lot. It's not just a question of how-to, you see; it's a question of how much to. Reading will help you answer how much, and only reams of writing will help you with the how. You can learn only by doing.

Writing Reading Books Description

If you only write when inspired, you may be a fairly decent

If you only write when inspired, you may be a fairly decent poet, but you'll never be a novelist.

Truth Discipline Inspirational Writing

I haven't any right to criticize books, and I don't do it ex

I haven't any right to criticize books, and I don't do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can't conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.

Reading Criticism Writing Austen Jerk

Recall, then, some event that has left a distinct impression

Recall, then, some event that has left a distinct impression on you---how at the corner of the street, perhaps, you passed two people talking. A tree shook; an electric light danced; the tone of the talk was comic, but also tragic; a whole vision, an entire conception, seemed contained in that moment.But when you attempt to reconstruct it in words, you will find that it breaks into a thousand conflicting impressions.

Reading Inspirational Writing

Every article and review and book that I have ever published

Every article and review and book that I have ever published has constituted an appeal to the person or persons to whom I should have talked before I dared to write it. I never launch any little essay without the hope and the fear, because the encounter may also be embarrassing that I shall draw a letter that begins, 'Dear Mr. Hitchens, it seems that you are unaware that' It is in this sense that authorship is collaborative with 'the reader.' And there's no help for it: you only find out what you ought to have known by pretending to know at least some of it already.It doesn't matter how obscure or arcane or esoteric your place of publication may be: some sweet law ensures that the person who should be scrutinizing your work eventually does do so.

Christopher Hitchens

Books Writing Writers Readers Book Reviews Authorship Articles Collaboration Essays

The hard part about writing a novel is finishing it.

The hard part about writing a novel is finishing it.

Ernest Hemingway

Writing

I've seen you, beauty, and you belong to me now, whoever you

I've seen you, beauty, and you belong to me now, whoever you are waiting for and if I never see you again, I thought. You belong to me and all Paris belongs to me and I belong to this notebook and this pencil.

Ernest Hemingway

Love Writing Paris A Moveable Feast

Forget it. Never explain; never apologize. You can either wr

Forget it. Never explain; never apologize. You can either write posthumously or you can't.

Christopher Hitchens

Death Writing Literature Nadine Gordimer

Beware of the compound adjective, beloved of the tyro and th

Beware of the compound adjective, beloved of the tyro and the 'poetess'.

Language Writing

The only end of writing is to enable readers better to enjoy

The only end of writing is to enable readers better to enjoy life or better to endure it.

Reading Writing

Sometimes you have to go on when you don't feel like it, and

Sometimes you have to go on when you don't feel like it, and sometimes you're doing good work when if feels like all you're managing is to shovel shit from a sitting position.

Writing Advice Writing