Writing quotes

Writing

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

30.7K quotes

Explore further

Browse quotes that often appear alongside writing — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.

Quote collection

Writing quotes (page 266 of 1537)

Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.

Charles Bukowski Poet, Novelist

Writing

"WHEN YOU LEAVE YOUR TYPEWRITER YOU LEAVE YOUR MACHINE GUN AND THE RATS COME POURING THROUGH."

Writing Gun Typewriters

Read quote 3 likes

Charles Bukowski Poet, Novelist

Writing

"There is only one place to write and that is alone at a typewriter. The writer who has to go into the streets is a writer who does not know the streets. . . when you leave your typewriter you leave your machine gun and the rats come pouring through."

Writing Gun Typewriters

Read quote 3 likes

Charles Bukowski Poet, Novelist

Writing

"Christmas poem to a man in jail hello Bill Abbott: I appreciate your passing around my books in jail there, my poems and stories. if I can lighten the load for some of those guys with my books, fine. but literature, you know, is difficult for the average man to assimilate (and for the unaverage man too); I don't like most poetry, for example, so I write mine the way I like to read it."

Men Writing Book

Read quote 3 likes

Charles Bukowski Poet, Novelist

Writing

"The writer has no responsibility other than to jack off in bed alone and write a good page."

Writing Responsibility Bed

Read quote 3 likes

Charles Bukowski Poet, Novelist

Writing

"I'm going to open another vottle. not a vottle, but a bottle. you open it and I'll drink it. and you try to write as much as I did without falling off of your chair."

Writing Trying Fall

Read quote 3 likes

Charles Bukowski Poet, Novelist

Writing

"I seldom know what I'm going to write when I sit down. There isn't much agony and sweat of the human spirit involved in doing it. The writing's easy, it's the living that is sometimes difficult."

Writing Sweat Agony

Read quote 3 likes

Charles Bukowski Poet, Novelist

Writing

"A dry period for me means perhaps going two or three nights without writing. I probably have dry periods but I'm not aware of them and I go on writing, only the writing probably isn't much good."

Writing Mean Night

Read quote 3 likes

Charles Bukowski Poet, Novelist

Writing

"Your writing", she said to me, "it's so raw. It's like a sledgehammer, and yet it has humor and tenderness. . . ."

Writing Said Tenderness

Read quote 3 likes

Bertolt Brecht Playwright, Poet

Writing

"You can't write poems about trees when the woods are full of policemen."

Writing Tree Woods

Read quote 3 likes

Bertrand Russell Philosopher, Mathematician

Writing

"Writing can be either readable or precise, but not at the same time."

Writing Precise

Read quote 3 likes

Bertrand Russell Philosopher, Mathematician

Writing

"To write tragedy, a man must feel tragedy. To feel tragedy, a man must be aware of the world in which he lives. Not only with his mind, but with his blood and sinews."

Men Writing Blood

Read quote 3 likes

Bertrand Russell Philosopher, Mathematician

Writing

"It appeared that after first contemplating a book on some subject, and after giving serious preliminary attention to it, I needed a period of subconscious incubation which could not be hurried and was if anything impeded by deliberate thinking.... Having, by a time of very intense concentration, planted the problem in my subconsciousness, it would germinate underground until, suddenly, the solution emerged with a blinding clarity, so that it only remained to write down what happened as if in a revelation."

Thinking Writing Book

Read quote 3 likes

Beth Grant Actress

Writing

"Tone is a very difficult thing. You can't write tone, I don't think. You can try - you certainly try. I write too, so I know I'm trying desperately to communicate to whoever's going to direct my pieces, the way I see the humor. But it's very difficult."

Thinking Writing Trying

Read quote 3 likes

Alan Dean Foster Author

Writing

"I hear entire symphonies, oratorios, in my head, but I can't write a note."

Writing Notes Symphony

Read quote 3 likes

Alan Dale Actor

Writing

"The guys that write Once Upon a Time were major writers on Lost, and we had lunch when I started on OUAT and the first thing I said to them was, "I spent five years on Lost, you have to tell me, was my character good or bad?" They looked at me and said, "We have no idea." That's why you have to make your own backstory. I decided Widmore was the evilest of the evil, but in the end, not even the writers knew."

Writing Years Character

Read quote 3 likes

Alan Dean Foster Author

Writing

"I've been writing full-time since 1978."

Writing

Read quote 3 likes

Alan Dean Foster Author

Writing

"There's certainly more new SF available than when I started writing. That means there's also more bad SF available. Whether there is also more good is a matter for future historians of the field."

Writing Mean Matter

Read quote 3 likes

Alan Dean Foster Author

Writing

"Don't try to write to the trend of the moment."

Writing Trying Trends

Read quote 3 likes

Alan Dean Foster Author

Writing

"Writing allows me the time to travel and see the world, which is what I always wanted to do. I'd really like to have been Sir Richard Francis Burton, but it's the wrong century."

Writing World Travel

Read quote 3 likes

Betty Smith Author

Writing

"In the future, when something comes up, you tell exactly how it happened but write down for yourself the way you think it should have happened. Tell the truth and write the story. Then you won't get mixed up. It was the best advice Francie every got."

Thinking Writing Should Have

Read quote 3 likes