Writing Quotes

However great a man's natural talent may be, the act of writing cannot be learned all at once.

some moments are nice, some arenicer, some are even worthwritingabout.

You rely too much on brain. The brain is the most overrated organ.

Like madness is the glory of this life.

If you're horrible to me, I'm going to write a song about it, and you won't like it. That's how I operate.

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

I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.

I have only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it shorter.", 1657)

Definition of rock journalism: People who can't write, doing interviews with people who can't think, in order to prepare articles for people who can't read.

Words have weight.

In a world where everyone struggles to survive whatever the cost, how could one judge those who decide to die?

I believe that to be the world's greatest livingwriterthere must be somethingterribly wrong with you.I don't even want to be the world's greatestdead writer.just being dead would be fairenough.

I was trying to learn to write, commencing with the simplest things, and one of the simplest things of all and the most fundamental is violent death.

You can not describe anything without betraying your point of view, your aspirations, your fears, your hopes. Everything.

I do think that poetry is important though, if you don’t strive at it, if you don’t fill it full of stars and falseness.

A poem is never a put-up job, so to speak. It begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness. It is never a thought to begin with.

Music resembles poetry, in eachAre nameless graces which no methods teach, And which a master hand alone can reach.

There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.

The first draft of anything is shit.

If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.

A short story is a different thing altogether – a short story is like a quick kiss in the dark from a stranger.

All I need is a sheet of paperand something to write with, and thenI can turn the world upside down.

Deliver me from writers who say the way they live doesn't matter. I'm not sure a bad person can write a good book. If art doesn't make us better, then what on earth is it for.

The secret of being a bore is to tell everything.

He asked, "What makes a man a writer?" "Well, " I said, "it's simple. You either get it down on paper, or jump off a bridge.

the writing of somemenis like a vast bridgethat carries youoverthe many thingsthat claw and tear.The Wine of Forever

If people cannot write well, they cannot think well, and if they cannot think well, others will do their thinking for them.

I would rather write 10, 000 notes than a single letter of the alphabet.

Write what you know.

Remember to get the weather in your damn book--weather is very important.

Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all.

There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.

take a writer away from his typewriterand all you have leftisthe sicknesswhich started himtypingin thebeginning

You know, everybody's ignorant, just on different subjects.

People do not deserve good writing, they are so pleased with bad.

Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.

I speak to the Black experience, but I am always talking about the human condition--about what we can endure, dream, fail at and survive.

It's a wonderful thing to be able to create your own world whenever you want to.

No, it’s not a very good story - its author was too busy listening to other voices to listen as closely as he should have to the one coming from inside.

Good novel are written by people who are not frightened.

I think that I had better go, Holmes.""Not a bit, doctor. Stay where you are. I am lost without my Boswell.

The rest of it - and perhaps the best of it - is a permission slip: you can, you should, and if you're brave enough to start, you will.

He felt as he always did when he finished a book — queerly empty, let down, aware that for each little success he had paid a toll of absurdity.

The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading, in order to write: a man will turn over half a library to make one book.

[I]f a book is well written, I always find it too short.

To write a novel, you need an iron butt.

What are you going to do? "Can't say - run for president, write -" "Greenwich Village?" "Good heavens, no - I said write - not drink.

No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader

My whole theory of writing I can sum up in one sentence. An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmasters of ever afterward.

You know you’re writing well when you’re throwing good stuff into the wastebasket.