"I can’t write five words but that I change seven."
Writing quotes
Writing
30.7K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Topics related to Writing
Browse quotes that often appear alongside writing — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Writing quotes (page 8 of 1537)
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"We are what we always were in Salem, but now the little crazy children are jangling the keys of the kingdom, and common vengeance writes the law!"
"Whether we are describing a king, an assassin, a thief, an honest man, a prostitute, a nun, a young girl, or a stallholder in a market, it is always ourselves that we are describing."
"Very few people possess true artistic ability. It is therefore both unseemly and unproductive to irritate the situation by making an effort. If you have a burning, restless urge to write or paint, simply eat something sweet and the feeling will pass."
"I'd written a lot of songs with hummingbirds in them. None of them ever came to anything, but I did write a few lines last month. It went like this: 'Listen to the hummingbird whose wings you cannot see. Listen to the hummingbird, don't listen to me'."
"In my writing I am acting as a map maker, an explorer of psychic areas, a cosmonaut of inner space, and I see no point in exploring areas that have already been thoroughly surveyed."
"Write a short story every week. It's not possible to write 52 bad short stories in a row."
"You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you."
"Write something, even if it's just a suicide note."
"In going where you have to go, and doing what you have to do, and seeing what you have to see, you'll dull and blunt the instrument you write with. But I would rather have it bent and dull and know I had to put it to the grindstone again and hammer it into shape and put a whetstone to it, and know that I had something to write about, than to have it bright and shining and nothing to say, or smooth and well-oiled in the closet, but unused."
"Led Zeppelin didn't write tunes that everybody liked, they left that to the Bee Gees."
"Every great man nowadays has his disciples, and it is usually Judas who writes the biography."
"The trade of authorship is a violent, and indestructible obsession."
"When we deny our stories, They define us. When we own our stories, we get to write the ending."
"Writing songs is cheaper than going to therapy."
"Christ is the most unique person of history. No man can write a history of the human race without giving first and foremost place to the penniless Teacher of Nazareth."
"If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all."
"Composing is a natural fit. As far as the creative process goes, I'd rather do this than anything else, by far. Something different happened to me when I started to write music to images. It was a feeling of excitement and connection and a sense of being in the right place that I never had before."
"The chief virtue that language can have is clarity."
"The road to hell is paved with works-in-progress."