Writing quotes
30.7K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Browse quotes that often appear alongside writing — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"I finally realized that my relaxation is practicing the piano and writing. I've tried to do other things, but I've learned through the decades, that this is what I enjoy, practicing music and writing."
"For me, writing has always come out of living a fairly to-the-bone kind of life, just really being present to a lot of life. The writing has been really a byproduct of that."
"Writing poems is my way of celebrating with the world that I have not committed suicide the evening before."
"No song or poem will bear my mother's name. Yet so many of the stories that I write, that we all write, are my mother's stories."
"Poetry is probably the one field of writing in which it is a mistake to try to psych out editors. In fact, specific marketing advice can sometimes harm the novice poet by enticing him to pursue fashions. The poet's best hope is to sound like nobody else, The finest, most enduring poetry constructs a marketplace of its own."
"No one can write a best seller by trying to. He must write with complete sincerity; the clichés that make you laugh, the hackneyed characters, the well-worn situations, the commonplace story that excites your derision, seem neither hackneyed, well worn nor commonplace to him. ... The conclusion is obvious: you cannot write anything that will convince unless you are yourself convinced. The best seller sells because he writes with his heart's blood."
"The whole race is a poet that writes down / The eccentric propositions of its fate."
"I think of a child's mind as a blank book. During the first years of his life, much will be written on the pages. The quality of that writing will affect his life profoundly."
"There rise authors now and then, who seem proof against the mutability of language, because they have rooted themselves in the unchanging principles of human nature."
"It has long been a tradition among novel writers that a book must end by everybody getting just what they wanted, or if the conventional happy ending was impossible, then it must be a tragedy in which one or both should die. In real life very few of us get what we want, our tragedies don't kill us, but we go on living them year after year, carrying them with us like a scar on an old wound."
"Writing a great song is not a simple task, but I feel like when everything comes together and you sing it in a certain way that no-one else can sing it, when it's written in a certain way that's perfect for the way that you're performing it, that those are the things that make a song great."
"For those that love the world serve it in action, Grow rich, popular, and full of influence; And should they paint or write still is it action, The struggle of the fly in marmalade."
"With me, a story usually begins with a single idea or mental picture. The writing of the story is simply a matter of working up to that moment, to explain why it happened or what caused it to follow."
"In writing, you must kill all your darlings."
"I contend that in the kind of nonfiction I write, and that other people also pursue, anything is permissible provided the reader knows what you're taking liberties with."
"No matter where; of comfort no man speak: Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs; Make dust our paper and with rainy eyes Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth"
"Let there be gall enough in thy ink, though thou write with a goose-pen, no matter."
"Songwriters might write cynical, world-wise lyrics and constantly talk about money, but most of us are downright naive when it comes to business."
"To secure your historical standing, be sure you are the first to write about it."
"I like to write about wherever I happen to be."
