Writing Quotes

I made a startling discovery. Time spent writing = output of work. Amazing.

I don't write for an audience, I don't think whether my book will sell, I don't sell it before I finish writing it.

I have no talent. I write poems for myself, to think things through, that’s all.

I don’t write poetry when I wish, I write when I can’t, when my larynx is flooded and my throat is shut.

My most pronounced writing habit is trying not to write.

I will never understand people who think that the way to show their righteous opposition to sexual freedom is to write letters full of filthy words.

It's so much easier to write a resume than to craft a spirit.

I can't think of anything to write about except families. They are a metaphor for every other part of society.

People have writer's block not because they can't write, but because they despair of writing eloquently.

The way to write a book is to actually write a book. A pen is useful, typing is also good. Keep putting words on the page.

There are moments when I am writing when I think that if other people knew how I felt right now, they’d burn me at the stake for feeling so good, so full, so much intense pleasure.

I still encourage anyone who feels at all compelled to write to do so. I just try to warn people who hope to get published that publication is not all it is cracked up to be. But writing is.

I used to tell my writing students that they must write the books they wished they could come upon - because then the books they hungered and thirsted for would exist.

Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises.

Writing is about hypnotizing yourself into believing in yourself, getting some work done, then unhypnotizing yourself and going over the material coldly.

My gratitude for good writing is unbounded; I’m grateful for it the way I’m grateful for the ocean.

Writing takes a combination of sophistication and innocence; it takes conscience, our belief that something is beautiful because it is right.

When you're conscious and writing from a place of insight and simplicity and real caring about the truth, you have the ability to throw the lights on for your reader.

I would recommend the short story form, which is a lot harder to write since you have to be so careful with words, until there is plenty of time to doodle through a novel

You start at the end, and then go back and write and go that way. Not everyone does, but I do. Some people just sit down at the page and start off. I start from what happened, including the why.

To write something, you have to risk making a fool of yourself.

Obsession led me to write. It's been that way with every book I've ever written. I become completely consumed by a theme, by characters, by a desire to meet a challenge.

I think I've been writing black poems all along, wearing my white mask. I'm always the victim ... but no longer!

Yes, I do often write poems from the mind, but I hope I don't ignore feelings and emotions.

If I waited till I felt like writing, I'd never write at all.

I was standing in the schoolyard waiting for a child when another mother came up to me. Have you found work yet? she asked. Or are you still just writing?

My family can always tell when I'm well into a novel because the meals get very crummy.

I'll write maybe one long paragraph describing the events, then a page or two breaking the events into chapters, and then reams of pages delving into my characters. After that, I'm ready to begin

My father was a frustrated writer. I think he wanted to write the great American novel.

Yeah, I have the detail-obsessed, controlling personality of a novelist, but I somehow ended up writing plays.

I cannot imagine a sorrier pursuit than struggling for years to write a book that attempts to appeal to people who do not read in the first place.

At its best, the sensation of writing is that of any unmerited grace. It is handed to you, but only if you look for it.

When you write, you lay out a line of words. Soon you find yourself deep in new territory.

I have to be by myself when I write, and I never know how long it will take. It is like making butter. Sometimes it will come in a few minutes, and sometimes I have to churn away for hours.

I write reviews of science books for the Boston Globe, so I like to give science books.

I always had a knack for improvisation. I can write down the notes I play, but never really had a proper academic musical background. I suppose I'm blessed and cursed by the fact I have that freedom.

I'm not unfamiliar with music, and I really do write music. I've gotten a talent for it. I don't have the technical skills, but I do plan to learn.

Look at it this way: if you write the novel of 'Cold Mountain,' it costs exactly the same to produce and market as a novel set in a room. If you make the film, the disparity of costs is huge.

My belief of book writing is much the same as my belief as to shoemaking. The man who will work the hardest at it, and will work with the most honest purpose, will work the best.

It is the test of a novel writer's art that he conceal his snake-in-the-grass; but the reader may be sure that it is always there.

The satirist who writes nothing but satire should write but little - or it will seem that his satire springs rather from his own caustic nature than from the sins of the world in which he lives.

Everyone judges plays as if they were very easy to write. They don't know that it is hard to write a good play, and twice as hardand tortuous to write a bad one.

I think crime writing is my link with trying to preserve a sort of order.

Writing long hand is the last refuge. One needs the time it takes to put pencil to paper and let it run along the ruled line.

Writers . . . write to give reality to experience.

Mozart began his works in childhood and a childlike quality lurked in his compositions until it dawned on him that the Requiem he was writing for s a stranger was his own.

The pens which write against disarmament are made with the same steel from which guns are made.

As for the story, whether the poet takes it ready made or constructs it for himself, he should first sketch its general outline, and then fill in the episodes and amplify in detail.

A good style must, first of all, be clear. It must not be mean or above the dignity of the subject. It must be appropriate.

I never smoke grass and drive my car because, for one thing, no matter how many letters I write to the road commissions, they still refuse to start designing highways with second-chance exits.