"I need to write about love. I need to think and think and write about love-otherwise, my soul won’t survive."
Read quote
6 likes
Writing quotes
Writing
30.7K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Topics related to Writing
Browse quotes that often appear alongside writing — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Writing quotes (page 143 of 1537)
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"Books are not about messages. I write to understand my soul"
Read quote
6 likes
"If I could, I'd write a huge encyclopedia just about the words luck and coincidence"
Read quote
6 likes
"Everything is material for the seed of happiness, if you look into it with inquisitiveness and curiosity. The future is completely open, and we are writing it moment to moment. There always is the potential to create an environment of blame -or one that is conducive to loving-kindness."
Read quote
6 likes
"If certain Critics were as clearsighted as they are malignant, how great would be the benefit to be derived from their writings!"
Read quote
6 likes
"Every first-rate editor I have ever heard of reads, edits and rewrites every word that goes into his publication.... Good editors are not 'permissive'; they do not let their colleagues do 'their thing'; they make sure that everybody does the 'paper's thing.' A good, let alone a great editor is an obsessive autocrat with a whim of iron, who rewrites and rewrites, cuts and slashes, until every piece is exactly the way he thinks it should have been done."
Read quote
6 likes
"I write fiction and I'm told it's autobiography, I write autobiography and I'm told it's fiction, so since I'm so dim and they're so smart, let them decide what it is or it isn't."
Read quote
6 likes
"I often have to write a hundred pages or more before there's a paragraph that's alive."
Read quote
6 likes
"You can't write good satirical fiction in America because reality will quickly outdo anything you might invent."
Read quote
6 likes
"He who has knowledge of the just and the good and beautiful ... will not, when in earnest, write them in ink."
Read quote
6 likes
"Literature is both my joy and my comfort: it can add to every happiness and there is no sorrow it cannot console."
Read quote
6 likes
"Some day I'll write a book and call it 'How I Got the Nickname Pumpsie' and sell it for one dollar, and if everybody who ever asked me that question buys the book, I'll be a millionaire."
Read quote
6 likes
"Were you here in the bad old days? ... That's why you can't read and write then!"
Read quote
6 likes
"I think one of the things about writing in the studio is that the song hasn't matured, if you like, so quite often the vocals are early attempts. Whereas once you've taken it out on the road a bit, you learn more about a song."
Read quote
6 likes
"The abstract music is just more interesting because it doesn't really have anything to say, but if it is good, it creates thoughts and feelings, and I enjoy that. For me, once the music creates those thoughts and feelings, I begin to write a song about it."
Read quote
6 likes
"I don't know what I'm going to write when I begin to write. It feels like you are walking down a path, but you can't see around the bend and you don't know where you are going to go, which is fun."
Read quote
6 likes
"It is harrowing for me to try to teach 20-year-old students, who earnestly want to improve their writing. The best I can think to tell them is: Quit smoking, and observe posted speed limits. This will improve your odds of getting old enough to be wise."
Read quote
6 likes
"I concentrate on character, theme, language, structure, voice. It actually surprises me that no matter what I write, people declare it "intently political." I'm just writing about the world I know, as it is. Wounds and griefs included."
Read quote
6 likes
"I wouldn't buy somebody's album on a dare if they called him a musician's musician. I don't write to be a writer's writer. I don't want to be like the little-magazine writer."
Read quote
6 likes
"I was always kind of florid. And full of rhetoric. That was my flaw. My whole time writing, I've had to work against that because it can be a wrecking posture."
Read quote
6 likes