Writing Quotes

Of writing well the source and fountainhead is wise thinking.

Horace

A prose writer gets tired of writing prose, and wants to be a poet. So he begins every line with a capital letter, and keeps on writing prose.

Samuel McChord Crothers

Writing only leads to more writing.

Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

Only amateurs say that they write for their own amusement. Writing is not an amusing occupation. It is a combination of ditch - Digging, mountain - Climbing, treadmill and childbirth... But amusing Never.

Edna Ferbe

Journal writing is a voyage to the interior.

Christina Baldwin

Vigorous writing is concise.

William Strunk Jr., "The Elements of Style", 1919

I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. N. B. This quote is commonly attributed to Voltaire, but it is not found in his writing.

S. G. Tallentyre

That everybody is allowed to learn to read spoileth in the long run not only writing but thinking.

Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra

Bureaucrats write memoranda both because they appear to be busy when they are writing and because the memos, once written, immediately become proof that they were busy.

Charles Peters

Major writing is to say what has been seen, so that it need never be said again.

Delmore Schwartz

In the next year or so, my signature will appear on 60 billion of United States currency. More important to me, however, is the signature that appears on my life - The strong, proud, assertive handwriting of a loving father and mother.

Katherine D. Ortega

Never be entirely idle but either be reading, or writing, or praying or meditating or endeavoring something for the public good.

Thomas a Kempis

Real seriousness in regard to writing is one of two absolute necessities. The other, unfortunately, is talent.

Ernest Hemingway

In every bit of honest writing in the world, there is a base theme. Try to understand men, if you understand each other you will be kind to each other. Knowing a man well never leads to hate and nearly always leads to love.

John Steinbeck

If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead, either write something worth reading or do things worth writing.

Benjamin Franklin

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.

Jessamyn West

When writing a novel a writer should create living people people not characters. A character is a caricature.

Ernest Hemingway

My final merit I refuse you, I refuse putting from me what I really am, Encompass worlds but never try to encompass me, I crowd your sleekest and best by simply looking toward you. Writing and talk do not prove me, I carry the plenum of proof in my face, With the hush of my lips I wholly confound the skeptic.

Walt Whitman

Advice to writers: Sometimes you just have to stop writing. Even before you begin.

Stanislaw J. Lec, "Unkempt Thoughts".

In the modern world, in which thousands of people are dying every hour as a consequence of politics, no writing anywhere can begin to be credible unless it is informed by political awareness and principles. Writers who have neither product utopian trash.

John Berge

This is the challenge of writing. You have to be very emotionally engaged in what you? re doing, or it comes out flat. You can? t fake your way through this.

Real Live Preacher, RealLivePreacher. com Weblog, January 29, 2004

Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself.

Truman Capote

Then anyone who leaves behind him a written manual, and likewise anyone who receives it, in the belief that such writing will be clear and certain, must be exceedingly simple - Minded...

Plato, _Phaedrus_

Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.

E. L. Doctorow

Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins commited in previous lives.

James Joyce

I have never thought of writing for reputation and honor. What I have in my heart must come out; that is the reason why I compose.

Ludwig van Beethoven

Yes, there is a Nirvanah; it is leading your sheep to a green pasture, and in putting your child to sleep, and in writing the last line of your poem.

Kahlil Gibran, Essay on Robert Frost, quoted in N. Y.. Times: Obit - Editorial, April 1982

No nation ancient or modern ever lost the liberty of freely speaking, writing, or publishing their sentiments, but forthwith lost their liberty in general and became slaves.

John Peter Zenge

Report writing, like motor - Car driving and love - Making, is one of those activities which almost every Englishman thinks he can do well without instruction. The results are of course usually abominable.

Tom Margerison, "A Random Walk in Science" compiled by R. L. Weber, edited by E. Mendoza