Writing quotes

Writing

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

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Writing quotes (page 299 of 1537)

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Virginia Woolf Novelist
Writing

"The good diarist writes either for himself alone or for a posterity so distant that it can safely hear every secret and justly weigh every motive. For such an audience there is need neither of affectation nor of restraint. Sincerity is what they ask, detail, and volume; skill with the pen comes in conveniently, but brilliance is not necessary; genius is a hindrance even; and should you know your business and do it manfully, posterity will let you off mixing with great men, reporting famous affairs, or having lain with the first ladies in the land."

Men Writing Land
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Virginia Woolf Novelist
Writing

"Mr. Beerbohm in his way is perfect ... He has brought personality into literature, not unconsciously and impurely, but so consciously and purely that we do not know whether there is any relation between Max the essayist and Mr. Beerbohm the man. We only know that the spirit of personality permeates every word that he writes ... He is without doubt the prince of his profession."

Men Writing Perfect
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Virginia Woolf Novelist
Writing

"I'm fundamentally, I think, an outsider. I do my best work and feel most braced with my back to the wall. It's an odd feeling though, writing aginst the current: difficult entirely to disregard the current. Yet of course I shall."

Thinking Writing Wall
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Virginia Woolf Novelist
Writing

"women have always been poor, not for two hundred years merely, but from the beginning of time. ... Women, then, have not had a dog's chance of writing poetry. That is why I have laid so much stress on money and a room of one's own."

Writing Dog Stress
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Virginia Woolf Novelist
Writing

"Words, English words, are full of echoes, of memories, of associations. They have been out and about, on people's lips, in their houses, in the streets, in the fields, for so many centuries. And that is one of the chief difficulties in writing them today -- that they are stored with other meanings, with other memories, and they have contracted so many famous marriages in the past."

Writing Memories Marriage
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Virginia Woolf Novelist
Writing

"Here was a woman about the year 1800 writing without hate, without bitterness, without fear, without protest, without preaching. That was how Shakespeare wrote, I thought, looking at Antony and Cleopatra; and when people compare Shakespeare and Jane Austen, they may mean that the minds of both had consumed all impediments; and for that reason we do not know Jane Austen and we do not know Shakespeare, and for that reason Jane Austen pervades every word that she wrote, and so does Shakespeare."

Writing Mean Hate
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Virginia Woolf Novelist
Writing

"I believe that the main thing in beginning a novel is to feel, not that you can write it, but that it exists on the far side of a gulf, which words can't cross: that it's to be pulled through only in a breathless anguish."

Believe Writing Sides
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Virginia Woolf Novelist
Writing

"Of course, literature is the only spiritual and humane career. Even painting tends to dumness, and music turns people erotic, whereas the more you write the nicer you become."

Writing Book Spiritual
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Virginia Woolf Novelist
Writing

"to write a novel in the heart of London is next to an impossibility. I feel as if I were nailing a flag to the top of a mast in a raging gale."

Writing Heart Flags
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Virginia Woolf Novelist
Writing

"So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say."

Writing Long Wish
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Virginia Woolf Novelist
Writing

"Why does one write these books after all? The drudgery, the misery, the grind, are forgotten everytime; and one launches another, and it seems sheer joy and buoyancy."

Writing Book Joy
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Virginia Woolf Novelist
Writing

"To write weekly, to write daily, to write shortly, to write for busy people catching trains in the morning or for tired people coming home in the evening, is a heartbreaking task for men who know good writing from bad. They do it, but instinctively draw out of harm's way anything precious that might be damaged by contact with the public, or anything sharp that might irritate its skin."

Writing Home Morning
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