Writing Quotes

Grand. There's a word I really hate. It's a phony. I could puke every time I hear it.

It is by teaching that we teach ourselves, by relating that we observe, by affirming that we examine, by showing that we look, by writing that we think, by pumping that we draw water into the well.

If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write, because our culture has no use for it.

I take mentoring very seriously and I am on the board of an organization called Girls Write Now, where we match teen girls and writing mentors because it changes their lives.

Writing poetry is the hard manual labor of the imagination.

Early on, if I was alone two three nights in a row, I'd start writing poems about suicide.

Cynics are simply thwarted romantics.

I write of love and death. What other subjects are there?

You write not for children but for yourself. And if by good fortune children enjoy what you enjoy, why then you are a writer of children's books.

Three hours a day will produce as much as a man ought to write.

I'm an empress. I wear an apron. My typewriter writes. It didn't break the way it warned. Even crazy, I'm as nice as a chocolate bar.

You never know what you will learn till you start writing. Then you discover truths you never knew existed.

Almost anyone can be an author; the business is to collect money and fame from this state of being.

Freedom of discussion is in England little else than the right to write or say anything which a jury of twelve shopkeepers think it expedient should be said or written.

If I can keep losing myself - and finding parts of myself - in other people's writing and direction, then that's all I can really ask for. That's all I want, to keep losing myself.

It's rather mystifying when you think about writing songs - where they come from, and how they're born.

I'm blessed, because I enjoy every part of my life. I enjoy writing songs. I've been trying to write songs since I was five years old.

Good writing is good writing, and I'm so happy when I read it.

There is no great writing, only great rewriting.

Good writing comes from good talent.

I labored for eight years thinking that I was writing a book for adults that was a nostalgic look back on childhood. Then my publisher informed me I'd written a children's book.

You have to live your story before being able to write your story.

The best way to become a successful writer is to read good writing, remember it, and then forget where you remember it from.

One learns much more by writing fiction, because the insights come from those deeper subconscious levels where the greater and more interesting truths lie.

No blur of inexactness, no cloud of vagueness, is allowable in good writing; from the first seeing to the last putting down, there must be steady lucidity and uncompromise of purpose.

Good writing isn’t a science. It’s an art, and the horizon is infinite. You can always get better.

Novel writing is far and away the most exhausting work I know.

If I'm not writing songs about things I've actually been through, it ruins the idea of making music to me.

Work finally begins when the fear of doing nothing exceeds the fear of doing it badly.

I don't talk very well. With writing, you've time to get it right. Also I've found the more I talk the less I write, and if I didn't write no one would want me to talk anyway.

I don't write songs for myself anymore. I only write songs on assignment. It's purely a business, but it is still so important to me emotionally.

Respectable people do not write music or make love as a career.

A novel, basically, is writing one sentence — then, without violating the scope of the first one, writing the next sentence.

Rhythm is one of the most powerful of pleasures, and when we feel a pleasurable rhythm we hope it will continue. When it does, it grows sweeter.

Take your materials from what is around you - if you see a dandelion, write about that; if it's misty, write about the mist. The materials for poetry are all about you in profusion.

I almost always urge people to write in the first person. ... Writing is an act of ego and you might as well admit it.

The world may be divided into people that read, people that write, people that think, and fox-hunters.

Suit the action to the word, the word to the action.

The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar, familiar things new.

If you want to write, find your splinter. Find the thing that pierces you and won't let you go.

I never know what I think about something until I read what I've written on it.

Make sure your message is clear, yet that you are faithful to its complexity.

Throughout my early career, I would write from five to ten in the morning every day before going to my office, a habit that has stayed with me since.

I think precision in writing goes hand in hand with not trying to say everything. You try and say two-thirds, so the reader will involve himself or herself.

No one who writes a good book is really dead.

The pen is the tongue of the soul; as are the thoughts engendered there, so will be the things written.

Words make another place, a place to escape to with your spirit alone.

A classic is a book that doesn't have to be written again.

Sometimes nothing is so solid to me as writing - I suppose that's what a vocation means - at times a torment, a bad conscience, but all in all, purpose and direction.

Writing, at its best and truest, can offer solace and salvation for both readers and writers.