Writing quotes
30.7K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside writing — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"I shall always feel respect for every one who has written a book, let it be what it may, for I had no idea of the trouble which trying to write common English could cost one—And alas there yet remains the worst part of all correcting the press."
"The most important thing for aspiring writers is for them to give themselves permission to be brave on the page, to write in the presence of fear, to go to those places that you think you can’t write - really that’s exactly what you need to write."
"I never really write the jokes. I just sit down over a week or two and try to figure out what I want to talk about. Once I narrow that down, then I start working on the material, like "How do I make this stuff funny?""
"Authors who moan with praise for their editors always seem to reek slightly of the Stockholm syndrome."
"You can learn Elvish, if you want. It's a language like Italian and English. You can learn to read it, you can learn to write it, and you can learn to speak it."
"I write as if to save somebody’s life. Probably my own. Life is a kind of madness that death makes. Long live the dead because we live in them."
"I write to save someone's life, probably my own"
"Writers quite often starve. And I'm mainly just writing critical prose and poetry, that's a formula for starvation."
"I try to be specific. One thought at a time. Clear. Articulate. And above all, memorable, if you can be. You'd like to write phrases that people can't forget as soon as they read them."
"Schoolchildren all over America are told to write to authors-often to authors whom they have never before heard of, whose work they are to young to understand in the least, and often in letters which are almost illiterate. If children are to be taught to respect the work of American poets I think some better way might be found to do so- some way which would not make such an inconsiderate demand on the author's time."
"Manipulating shadows and tonality is like writing music or a poem."
"There's no way I can stop writing, it's a form of insanity."
"When I was young I was depressed all the time. But suicide no longer seemed a possibility in my life. At my age there was very little left to kill. It was good to be old, no matter what they said. It was reasonable that a man had to be at least 50 years old before he could write with anything like clarity."
"Most people are much better at saying things in letters than in conversation, and some people can write artistic, inventive letters, but when they try a poem or story or novel they become pretentious."
"We always feel pretty creative as far as writing songs. We write them together; we just get in a room, or on occasion in Flea's garage. We just sort of improvise, like jazz musicians."
"(on A History of Western Philosophy) I was sometimes accused by reviewers of writing not a true history but a biased account of the events that I arbitrarily chose to write of. But to my mind, a man without a bias cannot write interesting history - if, indeed, such man exists."
"Women are the essential part of the theater but the writers are not writing about women. I think they're too perplexed about the whole female situation probably."
"Vanity is so secure in the heart of man that everyone wants to be admired: even I who write this, and you who read this."
"Everything that is written merely to please the author is worthless."
"Writing is a noble privilege compared with the lot of most people, who live like parts of a machine, who live only to keep the gears of society pointlessly turning."
