“You know that I write slowly. This is chiefly because I am never satisfied until I have said as much as possible in a few words, and writing briefly takes far more time than writing at length.”

As quoted in Calculus Gems (1992) by George F. Simmons

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "You know that I write slowly. This is chiefly because I am never satisfied until I have said as much as possible in a f…" by Carl Friedrich Gauss?
Carl Friedrich Gauss photo
Carl Friedrich Gauss 50
German mathematician and physical scientist 1777–1855

Related quotes

Orhan Pamuk photo

“The question we writers are asked most often, the favorite question, is: Why do you write? I write because I have an innate need to write. I write because I can’t do normal work as other people do. I write because I want to read books like the ones I write. I write because I am angry at everyone. I write because I love sitting in a room all day writing. I write because I can partake of real life only by changing it. I write because I want others, the whole world, to know what sort of life we lived, and continue to live, in Istanbul, in Turkey. I write because I love the smell of paper, pen, and ink. I write because I believe in literature, in the art of the novel, more than I believe in anything else. I write because it is a habit, a passion. I write because I am afraid of being forgotten. I write because I like the glory and interest that writing brings. I write to be alone. Perhaps I write because I hope to understand why I am so very, very angry at everyone. I write because I like to be read. I write because once I have begun a novel, an essay, a page I want to finish it. I write because everyone expects me to write. I write because I have a childish belief in the immortality of libraries, and in the way my books sit on the shelf. I write because it is exciting to turn all life’s beauties and riches into words. I write not to tell a story but to compose a story. I write because I wish to escape from the foreboding that there is a place I must go but—as in a dream—can’t quite get to. I write because I have never managed to be happy. I write to be happy.”

Orhan Pamuk (1952) Turkish novelist, screenwriter, and Nobel Prize in Literature recipient

" My Father's Suitcase", Nobel Prize for Literature lecture http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2006/pamuk-lecture_en.html (December 7, 2006).

Anne Morrow Lindbergh photo
Gore Vidal photo

“I have begun writing what I have said I'd never write, a memoir ("I am not my own subject," I used to say with icy superiority).”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

Preface http://www.threepennyreview.com/samples/vidal_su95.html
1990s, The City and the Pillar and Seven Early Stories (1995)

Emily Dickinson photo
E.L. Doctorow photo
Gene Wolfe photo
Joey Comeau photo

“Why do I write? I write because I have to, because it is all I know, because it is my truth, because I am compelled, because I am driven to make the world
acknowledge that women like me exist, and we possess a dangerous wisdom.”

Patrick Califia-Rice (1954) American writer

Variant: Why do I write? I write because I have to, because it is all I know, because it is my truth, because I am compelled, because I am driven to make the world acknowledge that women like me exist, and we possess a dangerous wisdom.

Lois McMaster Bujold photo

Related topics