Writing Quotes

Browse through our collection of quotes tagged with Writing.

I am simply impressed by the unexpected insights which showe

I am simply impressed by the unexpected insights which shower down on me when my job is to imagine, as contrasted with the woodenly familiar ideas which clutter my desk when my job is to tell the truth.

Imagination Writing

The fun of talk is to explore, but much of it and all that i

The fun of talk is to explore, but much of it and all that is irresponsible should not be written. Once written you have to stand by it. You may have said it to see whether you believed it or not.

Ernest Hemingway

Honesty Conversation Writing

Writing isn't about making money, getting famous, getting da

Writing isn't about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end, it's about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well. It's about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Getting happy.

Writing

I would walk along the quais when I had finished work or whe

I would walk along the quais when I had finished work or when I was trying to think something out. It was easier to think if I was walking and doing something or seeing people doing something that they understood.

Ernest Hemingway

Work Understanding Walking Thinking Writing

The way to write is to throw your body at the mark when your

The way to write is to throw your body at the mark when your arrows are spent.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Inspirational Writing

A sentence should be read as if its author, had he held a pl

A sentence should be read as if its author, had he held a plough instead of a pen, could have drawn a furrow deep and straight to the end.

Henry David Thoreau

Writing

Stories may well be lies, but they are good lies that say tr

Stories may well be lies, but they are good lies that say true things, and which can sometimes pay the rent.

Writing

Bad writing is more than a matter of shit syntax and faulty

Bad writing is more than a matter of shit syntax and faulty observation; bad writing usually arises from a stubborn refusal to tell stories about what people actually do -- to face the fact, let us say, that murderers sometimes help old ladies cross the street.

Fiction Writing Bad Writing Good Writing

It's a weird thing, writing.Sometimes you can look out acros

It's a weird thing, writing.Sometimes you can look out across what you're writing, and it's like looking out over a landscape on a glorious, clear summer's day. You can see every leaf on every tree, and hear the birdsong, and you know where you'll be going on your walk. And that's wonderful.Sometimes it's like driving through fog. You can't really see where you're going. You have just enough of the road in front of you to know that you're probably still on the road, and if you drive slowly and keep your headlamps lowered you'll still get where you were going.And that's hard while you're doing it, but satisfying at the end of a day like that, where you look down and you got 1500 words that didn't exist in that order down on paper, half of what you'd get on a good day, and you drove slowly, but you drove.And sometimes you come out of the fog into clarity, and you can see just what you're doing and where you're going, and you couldn't see or know any of that five minutes before.And that's magic.

Writing

I think it can be tremendously refreshing if a creator of li

I think it can be tremendously refreshing if a creator of literature has something on his mind other than the history of literature so far. Literature should not disappear up its own asshole, so to speak.

Writing Literature

We live and breathe words. .... It was books that made me fe

We live and breathe words. .... It was books that made me feel that perhaps I was not completely alone. They could be honest with me, and I with them. Reading your words, what you wrote, how you were lonely sometimes and afraid, but always brave; the way you saw the world, its colors and textures and sounds, I felt--I felt the way you thought, hoped, felt, dreamt. I felt I was dreaming and thinking and feeling you. I dreamed what you dreamed, wanted what you wanted--and then I realized that truly I just wanted you.

Cassandra Clare

Love Dreams Writing Letters Love At First Sight Power Of Words

The proper ending for any story about people it seems to me,

The proper ending for any story about people it seems to me, since life is now a polymer in which the Earth is wrapped so tightly, should be the same abbreviation, which I now write large because I feel like it, which is this one:ETC.

Writing

The habit of writing for my eye is good practice. It loosens

The habit of writing for my eye is good practice. It loosens the ligaments.

Writing Journaling Virginia Woolf

While an author is yet living we estimate his powers by his

While an author is yet living we estimate his powers by his worst performance, and when he is dead we rate them by his best.

Funny Humour Writing Literature

Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open.

Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open.

Advice Writing

Good prose should be transparent, like a window pane.

Good prose should be transparent, like a window pane.

Writing

All writers are vain, selfish and lazy, and at the very bott

All writers are vain, selfish and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives lies a mystery. Writing a book is a long, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.

Writing

Tears are words that need to be written.

Tears are words that need to be written.

Inspirational Sadness Writing

When I used to teach creative writing, I would tell the stud

When I used to teach creative writing, I would tell the students to make their characters want something right away - even if it's only a glass of water. Characters paralyzed by the meaninglessness of modern life still have to drink water from time to time.

Life Water Writing Characters Creative Writing Meaningless Meaninglessness Modern Life Paralyzed Write

If the book is good, is about something that you know, and i

If the book is good, is about something that you know, and is truly written, and reading it over you see that this is so, you can let the boys yip and the noise will have that pleasant sound coyotes make on a very cold night when they are out in the snow and you are in your own cabin that you have built or paid for with your work.

Ernest Hemingway

Books Reading Writing