Quotes about writing
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“I do not like to write - I like to have written.”

Gloria Steinem (1934) American feminist and journalist

“Language is like a road, it cannot be perceived all at once because it unfolds in time, whether heard or read. This narrative or temporal element has made writing and walking resemble each other.”

Rebecca Solnit (1961) Author and essayist from United States

Source: Wanderlust: A History of Walking

Time, Reading

“The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

People, Idea, Heart

“Men like women who write, even though they don't say so. A writer is a foreign country.”

Marguerite Duras (1914–1996) French writer and film director

Women, Men, Country

“My most important piece of advice to all you would-be writers: When you write, try to leave out all the parts readers skip.”

Elmore Leonard (1925–2013) American novelist and screenwriter

Source: Elmore Leonard's 10 Rules of Writing

Parting

“Isn't it mysterious to begin a new journal like this? I can run my fingers through the fresh clean pages but I cannot guess what the writing on them will be.”

Maud Hart Lovelace book Betsy in Spite of Herself

Source: Betsy in Spite of Herself

“My ideas usually come not at my desk writing but in the midst of living.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Idea

“Prescriptive grammar has spread linguistic insecurity like a plague among English speakers for centuries, numbs us to the aesthetic richness of non-standard speech, and distracts us from attending to genuine issues of linguistic style in writing.”

John McWhorter (1965) American linguist and political commentator

Source: Word on the Street: Debunking the Myth of "Pure" Standard English

“I decided that adventure was the best way to learn about writing.”

Lloyd Alexander (1924–2007) American children's writer

Way, Learning

“Writing is really a way of thinking--not just feeling but thinking about things that are disparate, unresolved, mysterious, problematic or just sweet.”

Toni Morrison (1931–2019) American writer

Way, Feeling, Thinking

“The victimization of children is nowhere forbidden; what is forbidden is to write about it.”

Alice Miller (1923–2010) Swiss psychologist

Source: Thou Shalt Not Be Aware : Society's Betrayal of the Child

Children

“It takes writing a billion bad words before you get to the good ones.”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

“When I got older I decided I wanted to be a real writer. I tried to write about real things. I wanted to describe the world, because to live in an undescribed world was too lonely.”

Nicole Krauss The History of Love

Source: The History of Love (2005), P. 7

World

“Don’t you, when strangers and friends come to call, straighten the cushions, kick the books under the bed and put away the letter you were writing? How many of us want any of us to see us as we really are? Isn’t the mirror hostile enough?”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

Hostility, Books

“I loved words. I love to sing them and speak them and even now, I must admit, I have fallen into the joy of writing them.”

Anne Rice (1941) American writer

Love, Singing, Joy

“Adventure is just a romantic name for trouble. It sounds swell when you write about it, but it's hell when you meet it face to face in a dark and lonely place.”

Louis L'Amour (1908–1988) Novelist, short story writer

Hell

“There have been none like us before. And there will be none afterwards. Be careful what you write.”

Sarah Dunant (1950) English writer, broadcaster and critic

Source: Blood & Beauty: The Borgias

“Writing and reading is to me synonymous with existing.”

Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) American art collector and experimental writer of novels, poetry and plays

Reading

“Some people have written that my writing has helped them go on.
It has helped me too. The writing, the roses, the 9 cats.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Source: The Captain is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship

People, Cats, Help

“He would write it for the reason he felt that all great literature, fiction and nonfiction, was written: truth comes out, in the end it always comes out. He would write it because he felt he had to.”

Stephen King book The Shining

Source: The Shining (1977)

Truth, Literature

“Writer’s block results from too much head. Cut off your head. Pegasus, poetry, was born of Medusa when her head was cut off. You have to be reckless when writing. Be as crazy as your conscience allows.”

Joseph Campbell (1904–1987) American mythologist, writer and lecturer

Source: A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living

“Each day of not writing, of comfort, of being that which he despised, dulled his ability and softened his will to work so that, finally, he did no work at all.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Source: The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories

“A bad book is as much of a labor to write as a good one; it comes as sincerely from the author's soul.”

Aldous Huxley book Point Counter Point

Variant: A bad book is as much of a labour to write as a good one; it comes as sincerely from the author's soul.
Source: Point Counter Point

Books, Soul, Sincerity

“We write to expose the unexposed. If there is one door in the castle you have been told not to go through, you must. The writer's job is to turn the unspeakable into words - not just into any words, but if we can, into rhythm and blues.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Source: Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

“Write about what you're afraid of.”

Donald Barthelme (1931–1989) American writer, editor, and professor

“The hardest thing about writing is writing.”

Nora Ephron (1941–2012) Film director, author screenwriter

“I was supposed to write a romantic comedy, but my characters broke up.”

Ann Brashares The Second Summer of the Sisterhood

Source: The Second Summer of the Sisterhood

“You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Variant: You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should've behaved better.
Source: Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

People, Motivational

“Meddling, smug, stupid little…"
"She likes me! They always play hard to get when they like me!"
"No. You do not understand. I could not have done it because I can not read or write.”

Darren Shan Allies of the Night

Source: Allies of the Night

Stupidity, Understanding, Reading

“It’s good.’ She chirps the last bit as if that were all to say about a book: It’s good or it’s bad. I liked it or I didn’t. No discussions of the writing, the themes, the nuances, the structure. Just good or bad. Like a hot dog.”

Gillian Flynn book Gone Girl

Source: Gone Girl

Books, Dogs

“Someone has to write all those stories: why not me?”

Elizabeth Gilbert (1969) American writer

“One should never write down or up to people, but out of yourself.”

Christopher Isherwood (1904–1986) English novelist

People

“I'm not a fast reader. I like to linger over each sentence, enjoying the style. If I don't enjoy the writing, I stop.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore

“People say to write about what you know. I'm here to tell you, no one wants to read that, cos you don't know anything. So write about something you don't know. And don't be scared, ever.”

Toni Morrison (1931–2019) American writer

People, Reading

“My God, if I had a heart, I would write my hate on ice, and wait for the sun to show.”

Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) Colombian writer

God, Hate, Waiting, Sun

“The best way to write a novel is to do it behind your own back.”

China Miéville (1972) English writer

Way

“All the stories I would like to write persecute me. When I am in my chamber, it seems as if they are all around me, like little devils, and while one tugs at my ear, another tweaks my nose, and each says to me, 'Sir, write me, I am beautiful.”

Umberto Eco book The Island of the Day Before

Source: The Island of the Day Before

Beauty

“Just be patient, she told herself, and with the mounting pages, the strength of her writing fist grew.”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Source: The Book Thief

“If you write to impress it will always be bad, but if you write to express it will be good”

Thornton Wilder (1897–1975) American playwright and novelist

“If I wasn't writing poems, I'd be washing my hands all the time.”

Sherman Alexie (1966) Native American author and filmmaker

Time

“I went to college, but I learned to write by reading and writing.”

Daniel Pinkwater (1941) writer

Learning, Reading

“No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.”

Booker T. Washington book Up from Slavery

Chapter XIV: The Atlanta Exposition Address http://books.google.com/books?id=xN45ZsUMgKEC&q=%22No+race+can+prosper+till+it+learns+that+there+is+as+much+dignity+in+tilling+a+field+as+in+writing+a+poem+It+is+at+the+bottom+of+life+we+must+begin+and+not+at+the+top%22&pg=PA220#v=onepage <br class="br">1900s, Up From Slavery (1901) <br class="br">Context: No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem. It is at the bottom of life we must begin, and not at the top.

Learning

“The reason why so few good books are written is, that so few people that can write know anything.”

Walter Bagehot (1826–1877) British journalist, businessman, and essayist

Shakespeare
Literary Studies (1879)
Context: The reason why so few good books are written is, that so few people that can write know anything. In general an author has always lived in a room, has read books, has cultivated science, is acquainted with the style and sentiments of the best authors, but he is out of the way of employing his own eyes and ears. He has nothing to hear and nothing to see. His life is a vacuum.

People, Books

“I don't think everyone wants to create the great American novel, but we all have a dream of telling our stories-of realizing what we think, feel, and see before we die. Writing is a path to meet ourselves and become intimate.”

Natalie Goldberg (1948) American writer

Source: Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within

Dreams, Feeling, Thinking

“To experience real agony is something hard to write about, impossible to understand while it grips you; you're frightened out of your wits, can’t sit still, move, or even go decently insane.”

Charles Bukowski book The People Look Like Flowers at Last

Source: The People Look Like Flowers at Last

Understanding

“If I could sum it up in 50 words, I wouldn't have needed to write a whole novel about it.”

Patrick Rothfuss (1973) American fantasy writer

“You either have to write or you shouldn't be writing. That's all.”

Joss Whedon (1964) American director, writer, and producer for television and film

“Dreams are illustrations… from the book your soul is writing about you.”

Marsha Norman (1947) American playwright, screenwriter and novelist

Source: The Fortune Teller

Books, Dreams, Soul

“It is a melancholy illusion of those who write books and articles that the printed word survives. Alas, it rarely does.”

Eric Hobsbawm (1917–2012) British academic historian and Marxist historiographer

Source: How to Change the World: Reflections on Marx and Marxism

Books

“What's the best part about writing a book?
Finishing it.”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

Books, Parting

“Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader—not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.”

E.L. Doctorow (1931–2015) novelist, editor, professor

Feeling

“My horizon's have shrunk and I have only endings to write.”

Salman Rushdie book The Enchantress of Florence

Source: The Enchantress of Florence

“I write to understand as much as to be understood.”

Elie Wiesel (1928–2016) writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor

Understanding

“The challenge is to write about real things magically.”

Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) Novelist, screenwriter

Source: Selected Letters

“It takes a heap of loafing to write a book.”

Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) American art collector and experimental writer of novels, poetry and plays

Books

“No one on earth is so boring and insignificant that he or she is not worth writing or reading about… One thing's for sure—no one but you can be the hero of your story.”

Jerry Spinelli (1941) American children's writer

Source: Today I Will: A Year of Quotes, Notes, and Promises to Myself

Reading

“Shaw… has a woman ever asked you to write a poem for her?"
"Good God, no," Gideon replied with a snicker. "Shaws don't write poetry. They pay others to write it for them and then take the credit for it.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Again the Magic

God

“He is careful of what he reads, for that is what he will write. He is careful of what he learns, for that is what he will know.”

Annie Dillard (1945) American writer

Source: The Writing Life

Learning, Reading

“Writing's funny, it's like walking down a hall in the dark looking for the light switch, and suddenly you find it, flip it on, and then you discover the hallway you passed through is papered with the novel you've written.”

Jonathan Safran Foer (1977) Novelist

Light

“No one writes anything worth writing, unless he writes entirely for the sake of his subject.”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher

Source: The Art of Literature

“Love. Fall in love and stay in love. Write only what you love, and love what you write. The word is love. You have to get up in the morning and write something you love, something to live for.”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

Love, Good Morning

“Writing a novel is not merely going on a shopping expedition across the border to an unreal land: it is hours and years spent in the factories, the streets, the cathedrals of the imagination.”

Janet Frame (1924–2004) New Zealand author

Imagination

“What you write chooses you.”

Terry Brooks (1944) American writer

“If I ever saw my muse she would be an old woman with a tight bun and spectacles poking me in the middle of the back and growling, "Wake up and write the book!”

Kerry Greenwood (1954) Australian crime writer

Books

“I need to write about love. I need to think and think and write about love-otherwise, my soul won’t survive.”

Paulo Coelho book Eleven Minutes

Source: Eleven Minutes

Love, Soul, Thinking

“There are thirty-two ways to write a story, and I’ve used every one, but there is only one plot – things are not as they seem.”

Jim Thompson (1906–1977) American writer

Way

“It's none of their business that you have to learn how to write. Let them think you were born that way.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

On the loss of a suitcase containing work from his first two years as a writer, as quoted in With Hemingway (1984) by Arnold Samuelson

Way, Business, Thinking, Learning

“The hard part about writing a novel is finishing it.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Parting

“Make no mistake, those who write long books have nothing to say.
Of course those who write short books have even less to say.”

Mark Z. Danielewski book House of Leaves

Source: House of Leaves

Books

“Health makes good propaganda. “'Proof' that women's activities outside the home are detrimental to the health and welfare of themselves, their families and the country as a whole” lent impetus, writes Ann Oakley, to the nineteenth-century cult of domesticity. The ovaries were seen as collective property rather than the woman's own business, as the face and body outline are seen today. Who can argue with health?”

Naomi Wolf book The Beauty Myth

Source: The Beauty Myth (1991), Chapter 7 : 'Violence', p. 227

Women, Health, Family, Home

“I do not write with ease, nor am I ever pleased with anything I write. And so I rewrite.”

Margaret Mitchell (1900–1949) American author and journalist

“What's in a name? That is what we ask ourselves in childhood when we write the name that we are told is ours.”

James Joyce Ulysses

Source: Ulysses

Childhood

“Nobody cares much whether you write or not. You just have to do it”

Natalie Goldberg (1948) American writer

“Writers don't write from experience, although many are hesitant to admit that they don't…. If you wrote from experience, you'd get maybe one book, maybe three poems. Writers write from empathy.”

Nikki Giovanni (1943) American writer and academic

Books

“If I write something, I fear it will happen, and if I love too much, I fear I will lose that person; nevertheless, I cannot stop writing or loving…”

Isabel Allende book Paula

Source: Paula

Love, Fear, Personality

“My style of writing is very diffrent from yours.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

“The young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.”

William Faulkner (1897–1962) American writer

Variant: the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat

Problem, Heart

“All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

Undated letter to his daughter "Scottie" (Frances Scott Fitzgerald).
Quoted, Letters
Variant: All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.

Water

“When one is writing a letter, he should think that the recipient will make it into a hanging scroll.”

Tsunetomo Yamamoto book Hagakure

Source: Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai

Thinking

“Sometimes, as much as writing saves one’s own life, you cannot imagine how it will save another’s. This is another reason why it is important to do the work, over and over again. It is food, the kind a soul needs.”

Lilith Saintcrow (1976) American writer

Life, Food, Soul, Imagination

“Ishmael gave himself to the writing of it, and as he did so he understood this, too: that accident ruled every corner of the universe except the chambers of the human heart.”

David Guterson book Snow Falling on Cedars

Source: Snow Falling on Cedars

Universe, Heart

“I don't remember Moses writing, 'Thou shalt not kill.. unless you think you have a good reason.”

Willie Nelson (1933) American country music singer-songwriter.

Source: The Tao of Willie: A Guide to the Happiness in Your Heart [With Headphones]

Thinking

“We may talk a good game and write even better ones, but we never outgrow those small wounded things we were when we were five and six and seven.”

Chris Bohjalian (1962) American novelist

Source: Secrets of Eden

Game

“There are many reasons why novelists write but they all have one thing in common a need to create an alternative world.”

John Fowles (1926–2005) British writer

World

“Trying to write is very much like trying to put a Chinese puzzle together. We have a pattern in mind which we wish to work out in words; but the words will not fit the spaces, or, if they do, they will not match the design.”

Helen Keller book The Story of My Life

Source: The Story of My Life

“If you write a line of zeroes, it´s still nothing.”

Ayn Rand book We the Living

Source: We the Living

“But you hate poetry!
Yes, but you make me want to write it.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Hate

“It's possible, in a poem or short story, to write about commonplace things and objects using commonplace but precise language, and to endow those things—a chair, a window curtain, a fork, a stone, a woman's earring—with immense, even startling power.”

Raymond Carver (1938–1988) American short story author and poet

“The solitude of writing is also quite frightening. It's quite close to madness, one just disappears for a day and loses touch.”

Nadine Gordimer (1923–2014) South african Nobel-winning writer

Source: Conversations With Nadine Gordimer

Solitude, Madness

“The bards sing of love, they celebrate slaughter, they extol kings and flatter queens, but were I a poet I would write in praise of friendship.”

Bernard Cornwell book The Winter King

Source: The Winter King

Love, Friendship, Singing

“Writing is making sense of life. You work your whole life and perhaps you've made sense of one small area.”

Nadine Gordimer (1923–2014) South african Nobel-winning writer

Interview with Jannika Hurwitt, published in Paris Review, 88 (Summer 1983) 82–127; reprinted in Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews, Sixth Series (1984) (the interview took place in two parts: fall 1979/spring 1980)

Life, Sense