"Support me... If you don't understand me don't write about me"
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 85 of 1537)
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"I always start out with an idea, even a boring idea, that becomes a question I don't have answers to."
"...black women write differently from white women. This is the most marked difference of all those combinations of black and white, male and female. It's not so much that women write differently from men, but that black women write differently from white women. Black men don't write very differently from white men."
"Songs are pretty easy. They are small, they are modular, they are about as big as a bagel. They are easy to build. Films are overwhelming in their magnitude and scope. By comparison, a lot of film directors wish they were writing songs because you can do it while getting your hair cut."
"Packs a Huge Emotional Punch! Graceful Writing, Great Acting, Exquisite Direction, Suspense, Profound Subject Matter and It Rocks!"
"Reading is probably what leads most writers to writing."
"New formalism is writing with language as flow, like the flow from a dam, running through a desert that has had no rain for decades."
"Writing only leads to more writing."
"Modern poets talk against business, poor things, but all of us write for money. Beginners are subjected to trial by market."
"I see myself in everything I write. All the good guys are me."
"When writing, I model all the heroes after myself. Of course, it's hard to make them quite as wonderful as I am, but I come as close as I can."
"Just because you have superpowers, that doesn't mean your love life would be perfect. I don't think superpowers automatically means there won't be any personality problems, family problems or even money problems. I just tried to write characters who are human beings who also have superpowers."
"Everybody wants to feel that you're writing to a certain demographic because that's good business, but I've never done that ... I tried to write stories that would interest me. I'd say, what would I like to read?... I don't think you can do your best work if you're writing for somebody else, because you never know what that somebody else really thinks or wants."
"If you're writing about a character, if he's a powerful character, unless you give him vulnerability I don't think he'll be as interesting to the reader."
"I have always felt a little bit uncomfortable with question [why I'm write these stories]. It's not a question that you would ask a guy that writes detective stories or the guy that writes mystery stories, or westerns, or whatever. But it is asked of the writer of horror stories because it seems that there is something nasty about our love for horror stories, or boogies, ghosts and goblins, demons and devils."
"Sometimes stories cry out to be told in such loud voices that you write them just to shut them up."
"Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule."
"When asked, "How do you write?" I invariably answer, "One word at a time," and the answer is invariably dismissed. But that is all it is. It sounds too simple to be true, but consider the Great Wall of China, if you will: one stone at a time, man. That's all. One stone at a time. But I've read you can see that motherfucker from space without a telescope."
"No, I don't think a 68-year-old copywriter . . . can write with the kids. That he's as creative. That he's as fresh. But he may be a better surgeon. His ad may not be quite as fresh and glowing as the Madison Ave. fraternity would like to see it be, and yet he might write an ad that will produce five times the sales. And that's the name of the game, isn't it?"
"Writing is finally a series of permissions you give yourself to be expressive in certain ways. To leap. To fly. To fail."