Writing Quotes

Browse through our collection of quotes tagged with Writing.

Only a few of us are going to be willing to break our own he

Only a few of us are going to be willing to break our own hearts by trading in the living beauty of imagination for the stark disappointment of words.

Beauty Inspirational Writing Disappointment

The recipe for great art has always been misery and a good b

The recipe for great art has always been misery and a good bowel movement.

Life Art Nature Humor Funny Inspirational Writing

The real writer is one who really writes. Talent is an inven

The real writer is one who really writes. Talent is an invention like phlogiston after the fact of fire. Work is its own cure. You have to like it better than being loved.

Work Love Writer Talent Writing Invention

If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all

If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.

Writing

One is seduced and battered in turn. The result is presumabl

One is seduced and battered in turn. The result is presumably wisdom. Wisdom! We are clinging to life like lizards.Why is it so difficult to assemble those things that really matter in life and to dwell among them only? I am referring to certain landscapes, persons, beasts, books, rooms, meteorological conditions, fruits. In fact, I insist on it.A letter is like a poem, it leaps into life and shows very clearly the marks, perhaps I should say thumbprints, of an unwilling or unready composer.

Life Writing Living

A short story is a writer's way of thinking through experien

A short story is a writer's way of thinking through experience... Journalism aims at accuracy, but fiction's aim is truth. The writer distorts reality in the interest of a larger truth.

Truth Journalism Fiction Writing

Political writing in our time consists almost entirely of pr

Political writing in our time consists almost entirely of prefabricated phrases bolted together like the pieces of a child's Meccano set. It is the unavoidable result of self-censorship. To write in plain, vigorous language one has to think fearlessly, and if one thinks fearlessly one cannot be politically orthodox.

Politics Language Orwell Writing Orthodoxy

The poorest experience is rich enough for all the purposes o

The poorest experience is rich enough for all the purposes of expressing thought

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Writing

Perfect is a dream that you wake up from and spend forever t

Perfect is a dream that you wake up from and spend forever trying to remember.

Joseph Eastwood

Perfection Writing Inspiration Perfect Dream

The rest of it - and perhaps the best of it - is a permissio

The rest of it - and perhaps the best of it - is a permission slip: you can, you should, and if you're brave enough to start, you will.

Writing

You look up when you wish to be exalted. And I look down bec

You look up when you wish to be exalted. And I look down because I am exalted.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Wisdom Life Writing Existentialism

A lie, sometimes, can be truer than the truth, which is why

A lie, sometimes, can be truer than the truth, which is why fiction gets written.

Truth Fiction On Fiction Writing Lies

The hard core of morality and even of religion seems to me t

The hard core of morality and even of religion seems to me to be just what makes good comedy possible...Where there is no norm, nothing can be ridiculous, except for a brief moment of unbalanced provincialism in which we may laugh at the merely unfamiliar. Unless there is something about which the author is never ironical, there can be no true irony in the work.

Humor Funny Morality Principles Comedy Writing Irony

A writer needs to ingest love to be passionate. Passion is a

A writer needs to ingest love to be passionate. Passion is a metabolite of love, and good writing is an active metabolite of passion.

Love Writer Passion Writers On Writing Writing Writing Craft Writers Good Writing Loving Payne Roman Metabolite Roman Payne

I don't mind nothing happening in a book, but nothing happen

I don't mind nothing happening in a book, but nothing happening in a phony way--characters saying things people never say, doing jobs that don't fit, the whole works--is simply asking too much of a reader. Something happening in a phony way must beat nothing happening in a phony way every time, right? I mean, you could prove that, mathematically, in an equation, and you can't often apply science to literature.

Science Reading Writing Literature

If we are exhorted to play simple melodies with beauty rathe

If we are exhorted to play simple melodies with beauty rather than difficult ones with error, the same should be applied to writing; simple words greater effect.

Music Beauty Words Writing Simple

Inking is meditation in liquid form...

Inking is meditation in liquid form...

Art Meditation Inspirational Writing Artist Illustration Ink

Writing is magic, as much the water of life as any other cre

Writing is magic, as much the water of life as any other creative art. The water is free. So drink. Drink and be filled up.

Writing

There are people who think that things that happen in fictio

There are people who think that things that happen in fiction do not really happen. These people are wrong.

Imagination Reality Fiction On Fiction Writing Inspiration State Of Mind

Write what you know.

Write what you know.

Writing