Writing quotes

Writing

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

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Writing quotes (page 190 of 1537)

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Ernest Hemingway Novelist

Writing

"But sometimes when I was starting a new story and I could not get it going, I would sit in front of the fire and squeeze the peel of the little oranges into the edge of the flame and watch the sputter of blue that they made. I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, 'Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.' So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there."

Thinking Writing Paris

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Ernest Hemingway Novelist

Writing

"You read what you have written and, as you always stop when you know what is going to happen next, you go on from there. You write until you come to a place where you still have your juice and know what will happen next and you stop and try to live through until the next day when you hit it again."

Writing Trying Next Day

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Ernest Hemingway Novelist

Writing

"After writing a story I was always empty and both sad and happy, as though I had made love."

Writing Stories Sad And Happy

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Ernest Hemingway Novelist

Writing

"People who write fiction, if they had not taken it up, might have become very successful liars."

Writing Taken Liars

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Ernest Hemingway Novelist

Writing

"Nobody that ever left their own country ever wrote anything worth printing. Not even in the newspapers."

Writing Country Printing

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Etan Cohen Screenwriter

Writing

"When you write you have a certain vision of how it could be and it's great to be able to see it all the way to the goal line."

Writing Goal Vision

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Ezra Pound Poet, Critic

Writing

"A people that grows accustomed to sloppy writing is a people in the process of losing grip on its empire and on itself."

People Writing Empires

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Elliott Smith Musician

Writing

"I'm just writing songs about how I feel or about how people I know feel."

People Writing Song

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Edward Abbey Author, Environmentalist

Writing

"Some people write to please, to soothe, to console. Others to provoke, to challenge, to exasperate and infuriate. I've always found the second approach the more pleasing."

People Writing Challenges

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Edward Abbey Author, Environmentalist

Writing

"How long does it take to write a good book? All of the years that you've lived."

Writing Years Book

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Carl Jung Psychiatrist, Psychoanalyst

Writing

"All my writings may be considered tasks imposed from within, their source was a fateful compulsion. What I wrote were things that assailed me from within myself. I permitted the spirit that moved me to speak out."

Writing Tasks Speaks Out

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Carl Sagan Astronomer, Astrophysicist

Writing

"Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of magic."

People Writing Book

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Caroline Lawrence Author

Writing

"I write about times and places I would visit in a time machine, like ancient Rome or the Wild West."

Writing Machines Rome

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Ben Schwartz Actor

Writing

"It's funny: I put money into short films, and I put really good actors in it, and I write some stuff that's really funny, and I'll get, like, a million views. But to the right of me, there will be a video of a kitten that falls into a toilet bowl, and it's three seconds long, and it will get 25 million views."

Writing Fall Views

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Danny Wallace Comedian

Writing

"I think if you've got a good idea it will stand out in one of the different mediums. For example, something might happen to me today and it could be something to talk about tomorrow on the radio, or I can write about it, or perhaps it will be best suited to telly."

Thinking Writing Ideas

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Benjamin Disraeli Politician, Author

Writing

"When I want to read a novel, I write one."

Writing Reading Inspiration

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Benjamin Franklin Inventor, Statesman, Author

Writing

"I have thought that wild flowers might be the alphabet of angels, — whereby they write on hills and fields mysterious truths, which it is not given our fallen nature to understand."

Writing Flower Angel

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Benjamin Franklin Inventor, Statesman, Author

Writing

"Write to Please Yourself. When You write to Please Others You end up Pleasing No one."

Writing Ends Please

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Benjamin Franklin Inventor, Statesman, Author

Writing

"The next thing most like living one's life over again seems to be a recollection of that life, and to make that recollection as durable as possible by putting it down in writing."

Writing Life Next

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Benjamin Franklin Inventor, Statesman, Author

Writing

"That which resembles most living one's life over again, seems to be to recall all the circumstances of it; and, to render this remembrance more durable, to record them in writing."

Writing Records Remembrance

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Writing quotes (page 190 of 1537)