What Is Writing Quotes

I started trying to write when I was in second or third grade.

When you are writing, of course, you have to do all that writing and correcting for yourself. When I was a librarian it was expected that I would know about a wide range of books.

I'm proud of what I write and feel endorsed by my readers.

Let go of your story so the Universe can write a new one for you.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm a character being written, or if I'm writing myself.

For me writing has always felt like praying even when I wasn't writing prayers.

I do not write for the reader to come, but for him who is here, short of reading the text on my shoulder.

Writing the opening lines of a story is a bit like starting to ski at the steepest part of a hill. You must have all your skills under control from the first instant.

I love to read. I remember hearing that the average author takes two years to write a book. So when I read a book, I feel like I am getting two years of life experiences.

Writing for children is bloody difficult; books for children are as complex as their adult counterparts, and they should therefore be accorded the same respect.

I started writing books for children because I could illustrate them myself and because, in my innocence, I thought they'd be easier.

Being a producer is a very different experience than writing my own songs.

I didn't break into comics to write fairytales or crime comics.

And it is a very beautiful idea, and possibly true, that a common man from Stratford with a common education was able to write these plays.

An author values a compliment even when it comes from a source of doubtful competency.

Experience is an author's most valuable asset; experience is the thing that puts the muscle and the breath and the warm blood into the book he writes.

It takes a heap of sense to write good nonsense

What are the proper proportions of a maxim? A minimum of sound to a maximum of sense.

Most writers regard the truth as their most valuable possession, and therefore are most economical in its use.

I never write Metropolis for seven cents because I can get the same price for city. I never write policeman because I can get the same money for cop.

When we accomplish a goal, it instantly loses some of its importance and we tend to lose interest. When we write down too many goals, there is plenty to keep our subconscious mind at work.

I say you ought to write out 10 outrageous goals that are bigger than you because your life isn't meaningful or important unless you're on purpose about something way bigger than you are.

For me writing and filmmaking is a therapeutic process. It reflects themes that I'm going through at a time in my life.

When she came to write her story, she would wonder when the books and the words started to mean not just something, but everything.

I am writing my second novel for children for Simon and Schuster.

Music expresses longing and love and joy better than any piece of dialogue you can ever write.

Some part of me knew from the first that what I wanted was not reality but myth.

Paper is more patient than man.

An artist is someone who can hold two opposing viewpoints and still remain fully functional.

It is the tale, not he who tells it.

Making a decision to write was a lot like deciding to jump into a frozen lake.

People who write fiction, if they had not taken it up, might have become very successful liars.

Outlines are the last resource of bad fiction writers who wish to God they were writing masters' theses.

I write description in longhand because that's hardest for me and you're closer to the paper when you work by hand, but I use the typewriter for dialogue because people speak like a typewriter works.

You can write any time people will leave you alone and not interrupt you. Or rather you can if you will be ruthless enough about it. But the best writing is certainly when you are in love.

I am too sick to be out of bed, too crazy to sleep, and am surrounded by horrors.

Give me just enough information so that I can lie convincingly.

If you intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days as a member of polite society are numbered.

I really learned how to write from Robert Louis Stevenson, Anthony Trollope, and de Maupassant.

Go where the pain is, go where the pleasure is.

grows like a seed in the dark out of the leaf-mould of the mind: out of all that has been seen or thought or read, that has long ago been forgotten, descending into the deeps.

I write for myself and strangers. The strangers, dear Readers, are an afterthought.

Like Elmore Leonard and Donald Westlake and Robert B. Parker and oh so many others, I want to die with my boots on, facedown on my keyboard if possible, in the middle of a sentence.

My best advice to writers is get yourself born in an interesting place.

If you start to revise before you've reached the end, you're likely to begin dawdling with the revisions and putting off the difficult task of writing.

I am a strong believer in the tyranny, the dictatorship, the absolute authority of the writer.

That's what fiction is for. It's for getting at the truth when the truth isn't sufficient for the truth.

...at last I understood that writing was this: an impulse to share with other people a feeling or truth that I myself had.

Once the writer in every individual comes to life (and that time is not far off), we are in for an age of universal deafness and lack of understanding.

No one wants to read poetry. You have to make it impossible for them to put the poem down--impossible for them to stop reading it, word after word. You have to keep them from closing the book.