Writing quotes
30.7K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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"Most of my recent plays were written in the railway train between Hatfield and Kings Cross. I write anywhere, on the top of omnibuses or wherever I may be; it is all the same to me."
"There was about a two-year period at the end of the '60s, when I realized I was in the wrong place and entertaining the wrong people with the wrong material and that I was not being true to myself. I went through a metamorphosis into something more authentic for me, a more authentic stage voice and writing voice."
"I went to my old school, where all the kids I'd been with for eight years were about to graduate. But the sisters wanted me to repeat the whole term; so I went to the principal and pleaded with her to allow me to graduate with my class. She finally agreed on the condition that I write the graduation play. It was called How Do You Spend Your Leisure Time?Catchy title, huh?"
"The writing of history is largely a process of diversion. Most historical accounts distract attention from the secret influences behind great events."
"I don't want to live in a hand -me -down world of others' experiences. I want to write about me, my discoveries, my fears, my feelings, about me."
"Critics don't bother me because if I do badly, I know I'm bad before they even write it. And if I'm good, I know I'm good. I know best about myself, so a critic doesn't anger me."
"I was a small business owner, father, and husband just living out in the suburbs. I kind of had a boring life until Post Secret came and turned that upside down. I printed up 3000 self-addressed postcards and handed them out to people on the street, inviting them to write down a secret on that postcard anonymously and mail it to me. I got a lot of surprises."
"I say one thing, you write another, and those who read you understand still something else! I say: cross, death, kingdom of heaven, God...and what do you understand? Each of you attaches his own suffering, interests and desires to each of these sacred words, and my words disappear, my soul is lost. I can't stand it any longer!"
"A writer is dear and necessary for us only in the measure of which he reveals to us the inner workings of his very soul."
"There is only one way to make money at writing, and that is to marry a publisher's daughter."
"As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me."
"In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness."
"Never have I enjoyed youth so thoroughly as I have in my old age. In writing Dialogues in Limbo, The Last Puritan, and now all these descriptions of the friends of my youth and the young friends of my middle age, I have drunk the pleasure of life more pure, more joyful than it ever was when mingled with all the hidden anxieties and little annoyances of actual living. Nothing is inherently and invincibly young except spirit. And spirit can enter a human being perhaps better in the quiet of old age and dwell there more undisturbed than in the turmoil of adventure."
"Artistic temperament is the disease that afflicts amateurs."
"Writing fiction has become a priestly business in countries that have lost their faith."
"I write in the morning at a table, longhand on yellow legal pads, just like Nixon, when I’m doing fiction."
"That famous writer’s block is a myth as far as I’m concerned. I think bad writers must have a great difficulty writing. They don’t want to do it. They have become writers out of reasons of ambition. It must be a great strain to them to make marks on a page when they really have nothing much to say, and don’t enjoy doing it. I’m not so sure what I have to say but I certainly enjoy making sentences."
"I sometimes think it is because they are so bad at expressing themselves verbally that writers take to pen and paper in the first place"
"Constant work, constant writing and constant revision. The real writer learns nothing from life. He is more like an oyster or a sponge. What he takes in he takes in normally the way any person takes in experience. But it is what is done with it in his mind, if he is a real writer, that makes his art."
"A talent for drama is not a talent for writing, but is ability to articulate human relationships."
