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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"A man writes because he is tormented, because he doubts. He needs to constantly prove to himself and the others that he’s worth something. And if I know for sure that I’m a genius? Why write then? What the hell for?"
"We are a species that needs and wants to understand who we are. Sheep lice do not seem to share this longing, which is one reason why they write so little."
"Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere."
"I write quickly with a sense of urgency. I don't edit myself out of existence, meaning I'll try to write 50 or 60 pages before I start rereading, revising and editing. That just helps with my confidence."
"Women writers should write a lot if they want to write. Take the English women, for example. What amazing workers."
"In descriptions of nature one must seize on small details, grouping them so that when the reader closes his eyes he gets a picture."
"Character gives us qualities, but it is in our actions — what we do — that we are happy or the reverse."
"I don't write for a particular audience."
"I work as an artist, and I think the audience of one, which is the self, and I have to satisfy myself as an artist. So I always say that I write for the same people that Picasso painted for. I think he painted for himself."
"One had the right to write because other people needed news of the inner world, and if they went too long without such news they would go mad with the chaos of their lives."
"Great writing attracts great actors. It attracts money. Without a great script, you have nothing."
"I've found, in my own writing, that a little hatred, keenly directed, is a useful thing."
"Writing is hard work, and if anything's true about the process, it's that fact that a good story is hard to find and even trickier to get on paper. What's less romantic than staring alone at a blank screen? And edgy? I've changed the cat little because I didn't know what my characters were going to say next."
"There is a sort of man who pays no attention to his good actions, but is tormented by his bad ones. This is the type that most often writes about himself."
"It's very hard to be a gentleman and a writer."
"Habits in writing as in life are only useful if they are broken as soon as they cease to be advantageous."
"The literary world is made up of little confederacies, each looking upon its own members as the lights of the universe; and considering all others as mere transient meteors, doomed to soon fall and be forgotten, while its own luminaries are to shine steadily into immortality."
"When a guy writes a scene where a woman does a deviant sex act on camera, it's objectifying. But when a woman writes it, it's feminism."
"I tend to not try and listen to a lot of other artists while I'm writing, because if I hear something that's brilliant."
"Writing a first draft is like trying to build a house in a strong wind."
