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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"Poetry isn't like any writing I've ever heard before. I don't understand all of it, just bits of images, sentences that appear half-finished, all fluttering together like brightly colored ribbons in the wind."
"The walls are covered -crammed- with writing. No. Not writing. They are covered with a single four-letter word that has been inscribed over and over, on every available surface. Love."
"Don't worry about what you're writing or whether it's good or even whether it makes sense."
"Additionally, Liesl and Po is the embodiment of what writing has always been for me at its purest and most basic--not a paycheck, certainly; not an idea, even; and not an escape. Actually, it is the opposite of an escape; it is a way back in, a way to enter and make sense of a world that occasionally seems harsh and terrible and mystifying. (From the "Author's Note" at the end)."
"Writing is such a weird emotional thing. It's hard. If you sit down with a plan to write something, it's going to be harder."
"I knew that I had to find out more about van Gogh. Even though I was far too young, and felt I did not have sufficient technique to write a book about Vincent van Gogh, I knew I had to try. If I didn't I would never write anything else."
"I spend several years trying to get inside the brain and heart of my subjects, listening to the interior monologues in their letters, and when I have to bridge the chasms between the factual evidence, I try to make an intuitive leap through the eyes and motivation of the person I'm writing about."
"Isaac Singer was born in Poland and doesn't write in English. Still, he's an American."
"You must avoid giving hostages to fortune, like getting an expensive wife, an expensive house, and a style of living that never lets you aford the time to take the chance to write what you wish."
"In a novel, it's hard to keep track of everybody"
"Writing is finally play, and there's no reason why you should get paid for playing"
"As I travel through life, I gather experiences that lie imprinted on the deepest strata of memory, and there they ferment, are transformed, and sometimes rise to the surface and sprout like strange plants from other worlds. What is the fertile humus of the subconscious composed of? Why are certain images converted into recurrent themes in nightmares or writing?"
"There's basically an element of fiction in everything you remember. Imagination and memory are almost the same brain processes. When I write fiction, I know that I'm using a bunch of lies that I've made up to create some form of truth. When I write a memoir, I'm using true elements to create something that will always be somehow fictionalized."
"I do not put myself in a box and say, for instance, I'm writing post-colonial literature. I don't know what I'm writing. That's the business of professors and critics. My job is to tell a story, and that's it."
"What happens in the world affects me. Sometimes, that's part of the writing."
"I was such a sullen, angry, sad kid. I'm sure there are writers who have had happy childhoods, but what are you going to write about? No ghosts, no fear. I'm very happy that I had an unhappy and uncomfortable childhood."
"That is the best part of writing: finding the hidden treasures, giving sparkle to worn out events, invigorating the tired soul with imagination, creating some kind of truth with many lies."
"write with honesty and don't worry about the feelings of others, because no matter what you say, they'll hate you anyway."
"I have learned many things in the 30 years that I have been writing."
"Writing is my job. I don't think of it as art."
