Writing quotes

Writing

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

30.7K quotes

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Writing quotes (page 140 of 1537)

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John Keats Poet
Writing

"I myself am pursuing the same instinctive course as the veriest human animal you can think of I am, however young, writing at random straining at particles of light in the midst of a great darkness without knowing the bearing of any one assertion, of any one opinion. Yet may I not in this be free from sin?"

Thinking Writing Animal
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John Keats Poet
Writing

"Poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself, but with its subject."

Writing Soul Poetry
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Joan Didion Author, Essayist
Writing

"Let me tell you one thing about why writers write: had I known the answer to any of these questions I would never have needed to write a novel."

Writing Answers Novel
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Joan Didion Author, Essayist
Writing

"My first notebook was a Big Five tablet, given to me [at age five] by my mother with the sensible suggestion that I stop whining and learn to amuse myself by writing down my thoughts."

Writing Mother Notebook
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Martin Luther Theologian
Writing

"When I am angry I can write, pray, and preach well, for then my whole temperament is quickened, my understanding sharpened, and all mundane vexations and temptations depart."

Writing Anger Temptation
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Martin Luther Theologian
Writing

"A man would have to be an idiot to write a book of laws for an apple tree telling it to bear apples and not thorns, seeing that the apple-tree will do it naturally and far better than any laws or teaching can prescribe."

Writing Book Teaching
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Writing

"Interviewer: Have you ever considered writing nonfiction? Mary Doria Russell: Oh, honey, I did! Let's see...There was "A Reconsideration of the Evidence for Cannibalism at the Krapina Neandertal Site." That was a big hit. And who could ever forget "Cutmarks on the Engis II Calvarium"? Then there was "Browridge Development as a Function of Bending Stress in the Supraorbital Region." I got tons of reprint requests for that one. Trust me fiction is better."

Writing Stress Honey
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Writing

"The poet must not only write the poem but must scrutinize the world intensely, or anyway that part of the world he or she has taken for subject. If the poem is thin, it is likely so not because the poet does not know enough words, but because he or she has not stood long enough among the flowers--has not seen them in any fresh, exciting, and valid way."

Writing Taken Flower
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Writing

"Writers sometimes give up what is most strange and wonderful about their writing - soften their roughest edges - to accommodate themselves toward a group response."

Writing Giving Up Groups
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Writing

"It's very important to write things down instantly, or you can lose the way you were thinking out a line. I have a rule that if I wake up at 3 in the morning and think of something, I write it down. I can't wait until morning - it'll be gone."

Thinking Writing Morning
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Matt Smith Actor
Writing

"I started writing songs in high school and always wanted to have a band, and eventually my creative endeavors developed into Theocracy. So in some ways, you could say the vision has been there since I started writing songs."

Writing School Song
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Maya Angelou Poet, Memoirist
Writing

"Hold those things that tell your history and protect them. During slavery, who was able to read or write or keep anything? The ability to have somebody to tell your story to is so important. It says: 'I was here. I may be sold tomorrow. But you know I was here.'"

Writing Important Life Changing
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May Sarton Poet
Writing

"I live alone, perhaps for no good reason, for the reason that I am an impossible creature, set apart by a temperament I have never learned to use as it could be used, thrown off by a word, a glance, a rainy day, or one drink too many. My need to be alone is balanced against my fear of what will happen when suddenly I enter the huge empty silence if I cannot find support there. I go up to Heaven and down to Hell in an hour, and keep alive only by imposing upon myself inexorable routines. I write too many letters and too few poems."

Writing Silence Rainy Day
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Maya Lin Architect, Artist
Writing

"I begin by imagining an artwork verbally. I try to describe in writing what the project is, what it is trying to do. I need to understand the artwork without giving it a specific materiality or solid form."

Writing Giving Trying
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