Writing Quotes

You're...writing for other writers to an extent-the dead writers whose work you admire, as well as the living writers you like to read.

Show me a writer, any writer, who hasn't suffered and I'll show you someone who writes in pastels as opposed to primary colors.

Every author really wants to have letters printed in the papers. Unable to make the grade, he drops down a rung of the ladder and writes novels.

The fastest way to teach a child to read is to teach them to write.

I write my books in my head, and not in a specific study with a view. The view is from my inner eyes.

Writing is a process of discovery of what you really do know. You can't limit yourself in advance to what you know, because you don't know everything you know.

I'm just somebody who tries to write things that entertain people. And if I can do it in a way that makes them prefer to emulate the good guy than the bad guy, I'm happy.

I think that you have to restrain yourself from googling your name and have other hobbies and desires and wants. You do a million things. You go to school, you write, you read, you blog.

The difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean; not to affect your reader, but to affect him precisely as you wish.

Writing for children is as easy as describing the history of the Byzantium in three words.

For me, being in prison writing in an African language was a way of saying: "Even if you put me in prison, I will keep on writing in the language which made you put me in prison."

The exit is usually where the entrance was.

The great artist is the simplifier.

If all the ancient sacred writings had been preserved, some would be found to be heretical.

Why can't somebody give us a list of things that everybody thinks and nobody says, and another list of things that everybody says and nobody thinks?

You get ideas from daydreaming. You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time. The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we're doing it.

The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story.

An idea, like a ghost, must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself.

I feel like I'm too busy writing history to read it.

Anything designed to be inoffensive isn't worth your time -- life itself is pretty offensive, ending as it does with death.

Follow the path of your aroused thought, and you will soon meet this infernal inscription: There is nothing so beautiful as that which does not exist.

It's doubtful that anyone with an internet connection at his workplace is writing good fiction.

Romanticism is the abuse of adjectives

The best work that anybody ever writes is the work that is on the verge of embarrassing him, always.

Beginning writers must appreciate the prerequisites if they hope to become writers. You pay your dues - which takes years.

writing is a labor of love and also an act of defiance, a way to light a candle in a gale wind.

The human mind is a wonderful thing, it starts working from before you're born and doesn't stop till you sit down to write a song.

The four rules of writing... 1. Write to discover. 2. There is no greater discovery than love. 3. All love comes from the Creator. 4. Write what you will.

Writing or making anything-a poem, a bird feeder, a chocolate cake-has self-respect in it. You're working. You're trying. You're not lying down on the ground, having given up.

You can't write the same book twice. Though I've been in historical musical situations, I can't go back and do that again. And though I run into artistic crises, they keep my life interesting.

It is not easy writing someone a postcard. The size and shape of the card cut you down to size.

Stop thinking about writing as art. Think of it as work. If you’re an artist, whatever you do is going to be art. If you’re not an artist, at least you can do a good day’s work.

A writer needs three things, experience, observation, and imagination, any two of which, at times any one of which, can supply the lack of the others.

Play and write music the way you want the world to be.

It's easy to write when you've nothing to write about (That is, when you are young).

A major writer combines these three - storyteller, teacher, enchanter - but it is the enchanter in him that predominates and makes him a major writer.

All of a sudden there's a song - there in your hotel room playing your guitar - and you write it, and two or three years later it will come true. It keeps you on your toes.

Writing is an escape from a world that crowds me. I like being alone in a room. It's almost a form of meditation- an investigation of my own life.

When thousands of people discover that their story is also someone else's story, they have the chance to write a new story together.

I like to write when I feel spiteful; it's like having a good sneeze.

Writing should be meaningful for children, Y an intrinsic need should be aroused in them, and Y writing should be incorporated into a task that is necessary and relevant.

It is easier to produce ten volumes of philosophical writings than to put one principle into practice.

Writing is a process of self-discipline you must learn before you can call yourself a writer. There are people who write, but I think they're quite different from people who must write.

Hunter can write a melody and stuff like that, but his forte is lyrics. He can write a serviceable melody to hang his lyrics on, and sometimes he comes up with something really nice.

The act of writing is either something the writer dreads or actually likes, and I actually like it. Even re-writing's fun. You're getting somewhere, whether it seems to move or not.

A good short-story writer has an instinct for sketching in just enough background to ground the specific story.

At least for the people who send me mail about a new language that they're designing, the general advice is: do it to learn about how to write a compiler

Bukharin's a swine and surely worse than a swine because he thinks it below his dignity to write a couple of lines.

The line of dialogue belongs to the character; the verb is the writer sticking his nose in.

No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge