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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"I don't force it. If you don't have an idea and you don't hear anything going over and over in your head, don't sit down and try to write a song. You know, go mow the lawn...My songs speak for themselves."
"All stories interest me, and some haunt me until I end up writing them."
"If writing novels is like planting a forest, then writing short stories is more like planting a garden."
"The solitude of writing is a solitude without which writing could not be produced, or would crumble, drained bloodless by the search for something else to write."
"I need a stimulating environment to write because my books are driven at 100 miles per hour at a time."
"Solitude is very different from a 'time-out' from our busy lives. Solitude is the very ground from which community grows. Whenever we pray alone, study, read, write, or simply spend quiet time away from the places where we interact with each other directly, we are potentially opened for a deeper intimacy with each other."
"A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom will make it clearer? 4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?"
"I do not wish to comment on the work; if it does not speak for itself, it is a failure."
"Writing means revealing oneself to excess."
"Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins committed in previous lives. The English reading public explains the reason why."
"If you don't compromise your gift, if you write each day as well as you can, and then submit your work and not worry about it and go on to the next piece, you suddenly find oddly enough that you're no more interested in the applause than the silence. You don't hear either one of them. You can never listen to the naysayers. If you do you won't survive."
"Characters who are absolutely sure about what they do, who plunge ahead without fear, are not that interesting. We don’t go through life that way. In reality, we have doubts just like everyone else. Bringing your Lead’s doubts to the surface in your plot pulls the reader deeper into the story, and this is an excellent way to coax the reader to lose himself in the story world you’re about to create."
"Anybody can have ideas-the difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph."
"Anthropological fieldwork is so much like writing a novel. You don't know what the hell is going on."
"Gotta keep it peace like a buddhist Nobody gonna Wesley snipe me It's less than likely, Move back, Let I breathe Jedi knight, The more space I get the better I write, (Oh) Never I write, but, if, ever I write, I need the space to say whatever I like."
"Writing is a solitary occupation. Family, friends, and society are the natural enemies of the writer. He must be alone, uninterrupted, and slightly savage if he is to sustain and complete an undertaking."
"Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on."
"The dictionary is based on the hypothesis -- obviously an unproven one -- that languages are made up of equivalent synonyms."
"A writer without interest or sympathy for the foibles of his fellow man is not conceivable as a writer."
"As a child. I grew up on a small farm, so I did a lot of drawings of animals, chickens and people. At the bottom of every page, I'd put a strange scribble. I was emulating adult handwriting, though I didn't actually know how to write."
