quotes about writing

Quotations About Writing

From http://koti.mbnet.fi/pasenka/quotes/q-writ.htm#Writing%20is%20heaven

I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paperwork. -- Peter de Vries

For me, writing is exploration; and most of the time, I'm surprised where the journey takes me. -- Jack Dann

Writing is a cop-out. An excuse to live perpetually in fantasy land, where you can create, direct and watch the products of your own head. Very selfish. -- Monica Dickens

The reason one writes isn't the fact he wants to say something. He writes because he has something to say. -- F. Scott Fitzgerald

Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It's the one and only thing you have to offer. -- Barbara Kingsolver

Writing is the best way to talk without being interrupted. -- Jules Renard

Reading usually precedes writing and the impulse to write is almost always fired by reading. Reading, the love of reading, is what makes you dream of becoming a writer. -- Susan Sontag

Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don't feel I should be doing something else. -- Gloria Steinem

Write something to suit yourself and many people will like it; write something to suit everybody and scarcely anyone will care for it. -- Jesse Stuart

Writing is only boring to the people who are boring themselves. -- Unknown

Writing is the hardest work in the world. I have been a bricklayer and a truck driver, and I tell you – as if you haven't been told a million times already – that writing is harder. Lonelier. And nobler and more enriching. -- Harlan Ellison

The work never matches the dream of perfection the artist has to start with. -- William Faulkner

Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards. -- Robert A. Heinlein

A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people. -- Thomas Mann

A blank piece of paper is God's way of telling us how hard it to be God. -- Sidney Sheldon

Writing is the flip side of sex – it's good only when it's over. -- Hunter S. Thompson

There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein. -- Red Smith

Writing is so difficult that I feel that writers, having had their hell on earth, will escape all punishment hereafter. -- Jessamyn West

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. -- Oscar Wilde

QUOTES ABOUT WRITING, page 2

If writing seems hard, it’s because it is hard. It’s one of the hardest things people do. -- William Zinsser

Easy reading is damned hard writing. -- Anonymous

Quantity produces quality. If you only write a few things, you're doomed. -- Ray Bradbury

Writing is physical work. It's sweaty work. You just can't will yourself to become a good writer. You really have to work at it. -- Will Haygood

I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have. -- Thomas Jefferson

When we read, we start at the beginning and continue until we reach the end. When we write, we start in the middle and fight our way out. -- Vickie Karp

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

Only ambitious nonentities and hearty mediocrities exhibit their rough drafts. It's like passing around samples of sputum. -- Vladimir Nabokov

There's no such thing as writer's block. That was invented by people in California who couldn't write. -- Terry Pratchett

I just sit at a typewriter and curse a bit. -- P. G. Wodehouse, after being asked about his writing technique

Exercise the writing muscle every day, even if it is only a letter, notes, a title list, a character sketch, a journal entry. Writers are like dancers, like athletes. Without that exercise, the muscles seize up. -- Jane Yolen

Writing is its own reward. -- Henry Miller

The pen is the tongue of the mind. -- Miguel de Cervantes

I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear. -- Joan Didion

How do I know what I think until I see what I say? -- E. M. Forster

Authors who never give you something to disagree with never give you anything to think about. -- Michael LaRocca

Stupidity is no excuse for not thinking. -- Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

The only time I know that something is true is the moment I discover it in the act of writing. -- Jean Malaquais

The brain that doesn't feed itself, eats itself. -- Gore Vidal

Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative. -- Oscar Wilde

QUOTES ABOUT WRITING, page 3

Detail makes the difference between boring and terrific writing. It’s the difference between a pencil sketch and a lush oil painting. As a writer, words are your paint. Use all the colors. --- Rhys Alexander

Never throw up on an editor. -- Ellen Datlow

Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader. Not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon. -- E.L. Doctorow

You must learn to overcome your very natural and appropriate revulsion for your own work. -- William Gibson

If you read good books, when you write, good books will come out of you. -- Natalie Goldberg

The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof shit detector. -- Ernst Hemingway

Prose is architecture, not interior decoration. -- Ernest Hemingway

Before you use a fancy word, make room for it. -- Joseph Joubert

One of the really bad things you can do to your writing is to dress up the vocabulary, looking for long words because you're maybe a little bit ashamed of your short ones. -- Stephen King

It's hard for me to believe that people who read very little - or not at all in some cases - should presume to write and expect people to like what they have written. Can I be blunt on this subject? If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time - or the tools - to write. Simple as that. -- Stephen King

If you think you're boring your audience, go slower not faster. -- Gustav Mahler

Write what you know. -- Daniel Quinn

Say all you have to say in the fewest possible words, or your reader will be sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words or he will certainly misunderstand them. -- John Ruskin

Resist the temptation to try to use dazzling style to conceal weakness of substance. -- Stanley Schmidt

If you don't know it, don't write it. -- Darrell Schweitzer

If you really want to hurt your parents and you don't have nerve enough to be homosexual, the least you can do is go into the arts. -- Kurt Vonnegut

If you think that something small cannot make a difference, try going to sleep with a mosquito in the room. -- Anonymous

Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats. -- Howard Aiken

Most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of fifteen. -- Willa Cather

Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal. -- T. S. Eliot

QUOTES ABOUT WRITING, page 4

There is no idea so brilliant or original that a sufficiently-untalented writer can't screw it up. --
Raymond Feist

Every bush can burn if you fire it with your imagination. -- Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

You have to turn the faucet on before the water starts to flow. -- Louis L’Amour

The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas. -- Linus Pauling

Whatever inspiration is, it's born from a continuous "I don't know." -- Wislawa Szymborska

An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all. -- Oscar Wilde

If you can't annoy somebody, there's little point in writing. -- Kingsley Amis

No tale tells all. -- Alexei Panshin

The reason for evil in the world is that people are not able to tell their stories.-- Carl Gustav Jung

Writing is communication, not self-expression. Nobody in this world wants to read your diary except your mother. -- Richard Peck

It is a cardinal sin to bore the reader. -- Larry Niven

Be anything you want to be, but don't be dull. -- Frank Robinson