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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"While we have the freedom to share our love for God with Him and His people in our own language, let's make sure that what we are writing about is orthodox and embraces the "whole counsel of Scripture.""
"The nobility of our calling will always be rooted in two commitments difficult to observe: refusal to lie about what we know, and resistance to oppression."
"I met, not long ago, a young man who aspired to become a novelist. Knowing that I was in the profession, he asked me to tell him how he should set to work to realize his ambition. I did my best to explain. 'The first thing,' I said, 'is to buy quite a lot of paper, a bottle of ink, and a pen. After that you merely have to write.'"
"Man has the right . . . to play as he will . . . to think what he will: to speak what he will: to write what he will: to draw, paint, carve, etch, mould, build as he will: to dress as he will."
"I think that if I get into the habit of writing a bit about what happens, or rather doesn't happen, I may lose a little of the sense of isolation and desolation which abides with me. My circumstances allowing of nothing but the ejaculation of one-syllabled reflections, a written monologue by that most interesting being, myself, may have its yet to be discovered consolations."
"I'm interested in thinking about how are we contributing to the culture, what we can write that might help us deepen the culture, make us more reflective, make us more empathetic, make us feel our connectedness in other ways."
"I gathered poets around me and we all wrote beautiful erotica. As we were condemned to focus only on sensuality, we had violent explosions of poetry. Writing erotica became a road to sainthood rather than to debauchery."
"Enduring fame is promised only to those writers who can offer to successive generations a substance constantly renewed; for every generation arrives upon the scene with its own particular hunger."
"Jealousy is such a direct attack on whatever measure of confidence you’ve been able to muster. But if you continue to write, you are probably going to have to deal with it, because some wonderful, dazzling successes are going to happen for some of the most awful, angry, undeserving writers you know-people who are, in other words, not you."
"Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird."
"Writing is how I communicate my deepest beliefs, and what I hope are helpful observations about our dual citizenship, as children of God, as regular old mixed-up, worried, flawed, precious human beings."
"That thing you had to force yourself to do-the actual act of writing-turns out to be the best part."
"Good writing is about telling the truth."
"The only reason people write is because they are not wonderful men."
"A novelist writes a novel, and people read it. But reading is a solitary act. While it may elicit a varied and personal response, the communal nature of the audience is like having five hundred people read your novel and respond to it at the same time. I find that thrilling."
"There's been no nepotism in my acting artistic life, but I think it's been pretty clear in my writing life. I knew what a pantoum was at age 11 - I knew form - therefore I would win the poetry contest. But I also realized that I would never be a great writer."
"When you're just writing, you can do anything with it. But with TV, you've gotta work within certain budget constraints, so you've got to pick and choose your battles."
"You should be able to drink a clean cup of water and you should be able to write your own name. That's the kind of stuff that holds dear to me, not I'm the best rapper. That doesn't matter to me. At that point it's all ego to me and I don't want to be driven by that and I try my best not to."
"Whoever is writing in the United States is using the American Dream as an ironical pole of his story. People elsewhere tend to accept, to a far greater degree anyway, that the conditions of life are hostile to mans pretensions."
"I can recapture everything when I write, my thoughts, my ideals and my fantasies."
