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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"Why honey, don't you want to get dressed?" My mother took care never to tell me to do anything. She would only reason with me sweetly, like one intelligent, mature person with another. It's almost three in the afternoon." I'm writing a novel," I said. "I haven't got time to change into this and change into that."
"What do you have in mind after you graduate?" What I always thought I had in mind was getting some big scholarship to graduate school or a grant to study all over Europe, and then I thought I'd be a professor and write books of poems or write books of poems and be an editor of some sort. Usually I had these plans on the tip of my tongue. "I don't really know," I heard myself say. I felt a deep shock, hearing myself say that, because the minute I said it, I knew it was true."
"Today is the first of August. It is hot, steamy and wet. It is raining. I am tempted to write a poem. But I remember what it said on one rejection slip: 'After a heavy rainfall, poems titled 'Rain' pour in from across the nation."
"Every story I create, creates me. I write to create myself."
"Writers, you know, are the beggars of Western society."
"Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man wanted to make a million dollars, the best way would be to start his own religion."
"It is fair to write about the change in your magazines. But what I want to see is the change on your covers ... When the covers change, that's when culture changes."
"Sometimes people write novels and they just be so wordy and so self-absorbed."
"I just write what I wanted to write. I write what amuses me. It's totally for myself. I never in my wildest dreams expected this popularity."
"I didn't write with a target audience in mind. What excited me was how much I would enjoy writing about Harry. I never thought about writing for children - children's books chose me. I think if it is a good book anyone will read it."
"Endless conflicts. Endless misunderstanding. All life is that. Great and little cannot understand one another."
"Faulkner is a writer who has had much to do with my soul, but Hemingway is the one who had the most to do with my craft - not simply for his books, but for his astounding knowledge of the aspect of craftsmanship in the science of writing."
"I wish I could write. I get these ideas but I never seem to be able to put them in words."
"The very reason I write is so that I might not sleepwalk through my entire life."
"I worship F. Scott Fitzgerald and I love his writing."
"I don't even do anything in real life. I just sit in my studio and write, I call my friends, I watch television. I don't do anything."
"And so it was settled. Sam Gamgee married Rose Cotton in the spring of 1420 (which was also famous for its weddings), and they came and lived at Bag End. And if Sam thought himself lucky, Frodo knew that he was more lucky himself; for there was not a hobbit in the Shire that was looked after with such care. When the labours or repair had all been planned and set going he took to a quiet life, writing a good deal and going through all his notes. He resigned the office of Deputy Mayor at the Free Fair that Midsummer, and dear old Will Whitfoot had another seven years of presiding at Banquets."
"I remember nothing about it except a philological fact. My mother said nothing about the dragon, but pointed out that one could not say 'a green great dragon', but had to say 'a great green dragon'. I wondered why, and still do. The fact that I remember this is possibly significant, as I do not think I ever tried to write a story again for many years, and was taken up with language."
"The best thing to do is to write about what you know, and if you write about what you know you can always pull those nice little tidbits that hook people, that shows that you know about this world and can bring people into a world that they may not know nothing about."
"Magic is older than writing. So nobody knows how it started."
