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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"The deepest satisfaction of writing is precisely that it opens up new spaces within us of which we were not aware before we started to write. To write is to embark on a journey whose final destination we do not know."
"Someday I would love to write about Vincent van Gogh - his paintings and letters continue to inspire me very much. But it remains hard to find the time and inner rest to write."
"I do play all the characters, when I write them, one after another. If they actually had to film me, the only one I could play would be Samwell Tarly or Hot Pie."
"I want you to be afraid to turn the page (and to do that) you need to show right from the beginning that you're playing for keeps."
"The most honest of men is the one who thinks and acts best, but the most powerful is the one who writes and speaks best."
"Most writers write books that they wouldn't read. I ought to know; I've done it myself."
"I like the distance that Europe gives me. Also if I stayed in America I'd be a full-time politician and have no time for writing, which is why I went to Europe to live in 1961."
"I have no television to go on so I get a lot of writing done. That's my substitute for television."
"I find in most novels no imagination at all. They seem to think the highest form of the novel is to write about marriage, because that's the most important thing there is for middle-class people."
"The most interesting thing about writing is the way that it obliterates time. Three hours seem like three minutes. Then there is the business of surprise. I never know what is coming next. The phrase that sounds in the head changes when it appears on the page. Then I start probing it with a pen, finding new meanings. Sometimes I burst out laughing at what is happening as I twist and turn sentences. Strange business, all in all. One never gets to the end of it. That’s why I go on, I suppose. To see what the next sentences I write will be."
"I’ve always said, ‘I have nothing to say, only to add.’ And it’s with each addition that the writing gets done. The first draft of anything is really just a track."
"If I couldn't get published tomorrow I'd still be writing. It's something to do with feeling so overwhelmed by this experience of life that you have to tell someone about it, and in a way that reorders the experience to make it manageable."
"I'm not much of a correspondent. My letters are not only uninteresting but sparse. I'm glad I don?t have to write for a living. It?s arduous work and the money is very uncertain. On those rare occasions when I wander into a bookstore it amazes me to see the avalanche of literature and semi-literature that is turned out weekly in this country. The people who write these things are either desperate for money or love starved. Why should anyone on a nice balmy day lock oneself in an office and hit a typewriter for hours on end. I think one of the greatest pleasures in the world is not writing."
"I write by ear. I tried writing with the typewriter, but I found it too unwieldy"
"Don't be silly. I'll write you twice a week."
"I was so long writing my review that I never got around to reading the book."
"There comes a point at which you stop writing and think all the more"
"When you reduce a woman to writing, she makes you think of a thousand other women"
"I write because I'm unhappy. I write because it's a way of fighting unhappiness."
"Love, Fear, and Esteem, - Write these on three stones."
