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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"... stop trying to get me to write about 'decent courageous people' -- read the Ladies' Home Journal for those! ... I believe in going through and facing the worst, not hiding from it."
"In writing, punctuation plays the role of body language. It helps readers hear you the way you want to be heard."
"The rainbow is such a remarkable phenomenon of nature, and its cause has been so meticulously sought after by inquiring minds throughout the ages, that I could not choose a more appropriate subject for demonstrating how, with the method I am using, we can arrive at knowledge not possessed at all by those whose writings are available to us."
"How did writing come to me? Like bird’s down on my windowpane, in winter. Just then there rose in the heart a struggle of firebrands, which has, still now, not ended."
"Ruy-Sanchez's works of fiction are always amazing: adventure, poetry and intelligence in a new geometry of words... His writing has nerve and agility, his intelligence is sharp without being cruel, his mood is sympathetic without complicity."
"If the urge to write should ever leave me, I want that day to be my last."
"Learn to write when you would rather sleep. Learn to exercise this gift of language when no conscious portion of your wits can vibrate anything but worry. Learn to write so, my son, and you can call yourself a writer."
"All men have inalienable rights to think freely, to talk freely, to write freely their own opinions and to counter or utter or write upon the opinions of others."
"If I were to write my title like going through the airport and you have to put down what you do? I would literally write ‘creative genius’."
"I've been writing since I was six. It is a compulsion, so I can't really say where the desire came from; I've always had it. My breakthrough with the first book came through persistence, because a lot of publishers turned it down!"
"I always have a basic plot outline, but I like to leave some things to be decided while I write."
"Nothing any good isn't hard."
"You can stroke people with words."
"Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand - but tell it. Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never being satisfied."
"Sometimes I was in a mood to write a song as if I was writing in my journal and reveal certain parts of me that I was ready to reveal."
"I deliberately look for colorful people. They're very right for theatre. Theatre has to be theatrical. If you can get color into the accountant, you've got something. Write the whole thing first and then say he's an accountant. That's a very wacky accountant, but so what? Theatricality feeds and challenges the actor, the director, and the designers."
"I confess that there is nothing to teach: no religion, no science, no writings which will lead your mind back to Spirit. Today I speak this way, tomorrow that, but always the Path is beyond words and beyond mind."
"I sip the Dom P watching Gandhi til I'm charged - writing in my book of rhymes, all the words past the margin"
"I finish a lot of lyrics while I'm in the water and it's always pretty constructive for me to get out in the water. I'm not actually writing the words down, but I have time to think about words, and doing a lot of surfing usually gives me a little space and peace of mind to finish things up."
"Something that you feel will find its own form."
