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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"I had decided to be a magician well before I decided to be a writer. I was the little boy who would get up on-stage and do magic wearing a fake mustache, which would fall off during the performance. I'm still trying to perform those tricks. Now I do it with writing."
"It's rare you get an idea from a dream. I can't really recall a story that ever worked out that way. I think in 35 years of writing, that I've ever had a dream that held up. They're much too dislocated"
"I don't write science fiction. I've only done one science fiction book and that's Fahrenheit 451, based on reality. Science fiction is a depiction of the real. Fantasy is a depiction of the unreal."
"After the first shock of recognition - a sudden sense of "this is what I'm going to write" - the novel starts to breed by itself; the process goes on solely in the mind, not on paper. I feel a kind of gentle development, an uncurling inside, and I know that the details are there already, that in fact I would see them plainly if I looked closer, but I prefer to wait until what is loosely called inspiration has completed the task for me."
"a man who has decided upon self-destruction is far removed from mundane affairs, and to sit down and write his will would be, at that moment, an act just as absurd as winding up one’s watch, since together with the man, the whole world is destroyed; the last letter is instantly reduced to dust and, with it, all the postmen; and like smoke, vanishes the estate bequeathed to a nonexistent progeny."
"You write your name in the snow Yet say nothing."
"The multiplicity of facts and writings is become so great that every thing must soon be reduced to extracts and dictionaries."
"No matter that I have inhibitions enough to fill all my pockets; I keep trying , hoping that one day I'll write a poem I can be proud to let sit in a museum exhibit as the only proof I existed."
"The writer cannot make the seas of distraction stand still, but he [or she] can at times come between the madly distracted and the distractions."
"I am deeply moved when I write. I get turned on by it. I've never used any drugs for stimulation. I don't use words loosely. When I'm working and the right word comes, there is an answering resonance within me. There is also a hardness of intention that goes with it. There is no idleness in it."
"Oblivion is the dark page, whereon Memory writes her light-beam characters, and makes them legible; were it all light, nothing could be read there, any more than if it were all darkness."
"On the subject of the history of the American Revolution, you ask who shall write it? Who can write it? And who will ever be able to write it? Nobody, except merely its external facts... all its councils, designs and discussions having been conducted by Congress [behind] closed doors - and no members, as far as I know, having even made notes of them. These, which are the life and soul of history, must forever be unknown."
"I think every young cook wants to write a book."
"I wanted to write about what we were doing at the French Laundry, the recipes and the stories."
"Eden Robinson is one of those rare artists who comes to writing with a skill and maturity that has taken the rest of us decades to achieve."
"I think I write in order to discover on my shelf a new book that I would enjoy reading, or to see a new play that would engross me."
"Ilike ideas writers have that I might not have written. Writers are there for a reason... to write for me."
"The better the writing, the easier it gets."
"I've always got a whole bunch of things in the works. That's sort of the nature of the business. Even when you're doing something you love doing, you have to be plotting and scheming and writing and preparing for what you're going to do when that's finished."
"Bland writing - timid, antiseptic, vanilla writing - is nearly as unhealthy as the brutal and dark. Instead of sipping, say, elixir, nectar, tequila, or champagne, the reader is invited to slurp lumpy milk or choke on the author's dust bunnies."
