Writing quotes

Writing

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

30.7K quotes

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Writing quotes (page 234 of 1537)

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Kurt Vonnegut Novelist, Satirist
Writing

"Just because you can read, write and do a little math, doesn't mean that you're entitled to conquer the universe."

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Lou Reed Musician, Songwriter
Writing

"I'm writing about real things. Real people. Real characters. You have to believe what I write about is true or you wouldn't pay any attention at all."

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Lucas Mann Author
Writing

"For better or worse, I seem to gravitate toward writing about something or someone else, then have my own self shove its way into that story. It seems insanely narcissistic. But I also think there's a particular effect that comes from using my autobiography in service to another story, as opposed to being the subject. I'm much more comfortable working in that mode. And I do think I have a persona or mood that I keep coming back to: self-conscious, self-critical, unsure. I write a lot about bodies, particularly male ones, usually as a point of emphasis for my insecurities about my own."

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Lydia Davis Author
Writing

"I started writing the one-sentence stories when I was translating 'Swann's Way.' There were two reasons. I had almost no time to do my own writing, but didn't want to stop. And it was a reaction to Proust's very long sentences."

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Kim Smith Artist
Writing

"A good edit process turns rocks into diamonds, and every author should love that part as much as the creative phase. I do love it. It's a different side to writing. It's like the fine-tuning."

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Pablo Neruda Poet, Diplomat
Writing

"If suddenly you do not exist, If suddenly you are not living, I shall go on living. I do not dare, I do not dare to write it, if you die. I shall go on living."

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e. e. cummings Poet, Painter
Writing

"XVII Lady, i will touch you with my mind. Touch you and touch and touch until you give me suddenly a smile,shyly obscene (lady i will touch you with my mind.)Touch you,that is all, lightly and you utterly will become with infinite care the poem which i do not write."

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E. M. Forster Novelist, Essayist
Writing

"Life - No, I've nothing to teach you about it for the moment. May be writing about it another week."

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E. M. Forster Novelist, Essayist
Writing

"The book [ A Passage to India ] shows signs of fatigue and disillusionment; but it has chapters of clear and triumphant beauty, and above all it makes us wonder, what will he write next?"

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E. M. Forster Novelist, Essayist
Writing

"The novel is a formidable mass, and it is so amorphous - no mountain in it to climb, no Parnassus or Helicon, not even a Pisgah. It is most distinctly one of the moister areas of literature - irrigated by a hundred rills and occasionally degenerating into a swamp. I do not wonder that the poets despise it, though they sometimes find themselves in it by accident. And I am not surprised at the annoyance of the historians when by accident it finds itself among them."

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D. A. Carson Theologian
Writing

"So there are all kinds of things that grammarian purists would argue are awkward forms of speech and sometimes they are intentional for rhetorical effect and sometimes it's the way people chose to write at the time. Inerrancy isn't interested in any of those kinds of things."

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D. H. Lawrence Novelist, Poet
Writing

"I never know when I sit down, just what I am going to write. I make no plan; it just comes, and I don't know where it comes from."

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