Writing quotes

Writing

30.7K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.

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Writing quotes (page 111 of 1537)

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Rebel Wilson Actress
Writing

"Been sitting at home all weekend writing for MTV Movie Awards - unfortunately MTV won't let me do my strip routine ala Magic Mike."

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Scott Frank Screenwriter, Director
Writing

"I usually write very few stage directions. I think a lot of that is a waste of time. The art of screenwriting is in its terseness, saying a lot with a little. I have no patience when I read a script where the writer describes this guy and what he's wearing and his glasses and his hair."

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Thomas Jefferson Politician, Founding Father
Writing

"Take care that you never spell a word wrong. Always before you write a word, consider how it is spelled, and, if you do not remember, turn to a dictionary. It produces great praise to a lady to spell well. to his daughter Martha"

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Tom Wolfe Journalist, Novelist
Writing

"(W)hat I write when I force myself is generally just as good as what I write when I'm feeling inspired. It's mainly a matter of forcing yourself to write."

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Tracy K. Smith Poet, Professor
Writing

"Once I started writing all the time and interacting with poets, I made a conscious decision to identify myself as a poet. It's funny how much a single word can provide focus and direction. As soon as I claimed that identity, I started clearing more and more space for poetry in my life and applying poetic tools to other areas of my life. The world became a different place, and I witnessed it through different kinds of eyes."

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Tupac Shakur Rapper, Actor, Activist
Writing

"Bury me smilin' with G's in my pocket, Have a party at my funeral let every rapper rock it Let the hoes that I used to know, from way before Kiss me from my head to my toe, Gimme a paper and pen so I can write about my life of sin, Couple bottles of gin, in case I don't get in."

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Seamus Heaney Poet, Playwright
Writing

"I have always thought of poems as stepping stones in one's own sense of oneself. Every now and again, you write a poem that gives you self-respect and steadies your going a little bit farther out in the stream. At the same time, you have to conjure the next stepping stone because the stream, we hope, keeps flowing."

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Richard P. Feynman Physicist
Writing

"A poet once said, "The whole universe is in a glass of wine." We will probably never know in what sense he meant that, for poets do not write to be understood... How vivid is the claret, pressing its existence into the consciousness that watches it! If our small minds, for some convenience, divide this glass of wine, this universe, into parts - physics, biology, geology, astronomy, psychology, and so on - remember that nature does not know it! So let us put it all back together, not forgetting ultimately what it is for. Let it give us one more final pleasure: drink it and forget it all!"

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Sidonie Gabrielle Colette Author, Actress
Writing

"To write is to pour one’s innermost self passionately upon the tempting paper, at such frantic speed that sometimes one’s hand struggles and rebels, overdriven by the impatient god which guides it - and to find, next day, in place of the golden bough that bloomed miraculously in that dazzling hour, a withered bramble and a stunted flower."

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Ricky Jay Magician
Writing

"Every acting gig isn't the same, every writing job isn't the same, every live performance isn't the same - the challenge is the level of difficulty or ease, and that may vary."

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Simone Weil Philosopher, Activist
Writing

"To write the lives of the great in separating them from their works necessarily ends by above all stressing their pettiness, because it is in their work that they have put the best of themselves."

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Robert A. Heinlein Science Fiction Author
Writing

"One could write a history of science in reverse by assembling the solemn pronouncements of highest authority about what could not be done and could never happen."

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Slavoj Žižek Philosopher, Cultural Critic
Writing

"I hate writing. I so intensely hate writing - I cannot tell you how much. The moment I am at the end of one project I have the idea that I didn't really succeed in telling what I wanted to tell, that I need a new project - it's an absolute nightmare. But my whole economy of writing is in fact based on an obsessional ritual to avoid the actual act of writing."

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Slavoj Žižek Philosopher, Cultural Critic
Writing

"Those who were still able to write beautiful melodies were kitsch composers like Tchaikovsky. Tchaikovsky approaches true art not in his numerous beautiful melodies, but when a melodic line is thwarted."

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