Quotes about writing

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“If you have not done things worthy of being written about, at least write things worthy of being read.”

Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798) Italian adventurer and author from the Republic of Venice

“Good writers have two things in common: they prefer to be understood rather than admired; and they do not write for knowing and over-acute readers.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

“Make me a willow cabin at your gate,
And call upon my soul within the house;
Write loyal cantons of contemned love
And sing them loud even in the dead of night.”

William Shakespeare Twelfth Night

“Writing is like getting married. One should never commit oneself until one is amazed at one's luck.”

Iris Murdoch book The Black Prince

“Why is a raven like a writing desk? - Mad Hatter
I haven't the slightest idea. - Alice”

Lewis Carroll book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

“I am too fond of reading books to care to write them.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Pain is easy to write. In pain we're all happily individual. But what can one write about happiness?”

Graham Greene book The End of the Affair

“Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, the melancholia, the panic fear which is inherent in the human condition.”

Graham Greene book Ways of Escape

“Which is why I am writing this book. To think. To understand. It just happens to be the way I'm made. I have to write things down to feel I fully comprehend them.”

Haruki Murakami book Norwegian Wood

“When I think of all the harm [the Bible] has done, I despair of ever writing anything to equal it.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

“Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.”

Frank Zappa (1940–1993) American musician, songwriter, composer, and record and film producer

“For once the disease of reading has laid upon the system it weakens so that it falls an easy prey to that other scourge which dwells in the ink pot and festers in the quill. The wretch takes to writing.”

Virginia Woolf book Orlando: A Biography

“I am writing with my burnt hand about the nature of fire.”

Ingeborg Bachmann (1926–1973) Austrian poet and author

“When I want to read a novel, I write one.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

“Writing is like prostitution. First you do it for love, and then for a few close friends, and then for money.”

Molière (1622–1673) French playwright and actor

“I want to write, but more than that, I want to bring out all kinds of things that lie buried deep in my heart.”

Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary

“Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.”

Cyril Connolly (1903–1974) British author

“You know, it's hard work to write a book. I can't tell you how many times I really get going on an idea, then my quill breaks. Or I spill ink all over my writing tunic.”

Ellen DeGeneres (1958) American stand-up comedian, television host, and actress

“Perhaps I write for no one. Perhaps for the same person children are writing for when they scrawl their names in the snow.”

Margaret Atwood (1939) Canadian writer

“The only book that is worth writing is the one we don’t have the courage or strength to write. The book that hurts us (we who are writing), that makes us tremble, redden, bleed”

Hélène Cixous (1937) French philosopher and writer

“Don’t let yourself be. Find something new to try, something to change. Count how often it succeeds and how often it doesn’t. Write about it. Ask a patient or a colleague what they think about it. See if you can keep the conversation going.”

Atul Gawande (1965) American surgeon

“Life is God's novel. Let him write it.”

Isaac Bashevis Singer (1902–1991) Polish-born Jewish-American author

“I am jealous of those who think more deeply, who write better, who draw better, who ski better, who look better, who live better, who love better than I.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

“As for my next book, I won't write it till it has grown heavy in my mind like a ripe pear; pendant, gravid, asking to be cut or it will fall.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

“[N]othing is as surprising as life. Except for writing. Except for writing. Yes, of course, except for writing, the only consolation.”

Orhan Pamuk book The Black Book

“Writing is a lonely job. Having someone who believes in you makes a lot if difference. They don't have to makes speeches. Just believing is usually enough.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

“We write to taste life twice," Anais Nin wrote, "in the moment and in retrospection.”

Sue Monk Kidd (1948) Novelist

“Don’t be in too much of a rush to be published. There is enormous value in listening and reading and writing—and then putting your words away for weeks or months–and then returning to your work to polish it some more.”

Sharon Creech (1945) American writer of children's novels

“Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book.”

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

“The human bird shall take his first flight, filling the words with amazement, all writings with his fame, and bringing eternal glory to those whose nest whence he sprang.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

“The person who writes for fools is always sure of a large audience.”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher

“There's something happening everyday, but I'm too tired and lazy to write it all down.”

Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary

“The mystical life is at the centre of all that I do and all that I think and all that I write.”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

“Never be entirely idle; but either be reading, or writing, or praying, or meditating, or endeavoring something for the public good.”

Thomas à Kempis (1380–1471) German canon regular

“If you cannot write well, you cannot think well; if you cannot think well, others will do your thinking for you.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

“I would like to write a Book which would drive men mad, which would be like an open door leading them where they would never have consented to go, in short, a door that opens onto reality.”

Antonin Artaud (1896–1948) French-Occitanian poet, playwright, actor and theatre director

“In the deepest hour of the night, confess to yourself that you would die if you were forbidden to write. And look deep into your heart where it spreads its roots, the answer, and ask yourself, must I write?”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Letters to a Young Poet

“Why is a raven like a writing desk?”

Lewis Carroll book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

“It was a subtle refinement of God to learn Greek when he wished to write a book – and that he did not learn it better.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

“Happy endings are all I can do. I wouldn't know how to write anything else.”

Julia Quinn (1970) American novelist

“We are what we always were in Salem, but now the little crazy children are jangling the keys of the kingdom, and common vengeance writes the law!”

Arthur Miller The Crucible

“Writing is not life, but I think that sometimes it can be a way back to life.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

“There's no such thing as writer's block. That was invented by people in California who couldn't write.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

“Work on a good piece of writing proceeds on three levels: a musical one, where it is composed; an architectural one, where it is constructed; and finally, a textile one, where it is woven.”

Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) German literary critic, philosopher and social critic (1892-1940)

“Life cannot defeat a writer who is in love with writing - for life itself is a writer's love until death.”

Edna Ferber (1885–1968) Novelist, playwright

“I want to write a novel about Silence," he said; “the things people don’t say.”

Virginia Woolf book The Voyage Out

“The proper definition of a man is an animal that writes letters.”

Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer

“Since a time has come, Mademoiselle, when the severe laws of men no longer prevent women from applying themselves to the sciences and other disciplines, it seems to me that those of us who can should use this long-craved freedom to study and to let men see how greatly they wronged us when depriving us of its honor and advantages. And if any woman becomes so proficient as to be able to write down her thoughts, let her do so and not despise the honor, but rather flaunt it instead of fine clothes, necklaces, and rings. For these may be considered ours only by use, whereas the honor of being educated is ours entirely.”

Louise Labé (1524–1566) female French poet of the Renaissance, born in Lyon

“I write and that way rid myself of me and then at last I can rest.”

Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) Brazilian writer

“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.”

Ted Dekker book Showdown

“Whoever has no house now, will never have one.
Whoever is alone will stay alone,
will sit, read, write long letters through the evening,
and wander on the boulevards, up and down,
restlessly, while dry leaves are blowing.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

“Don't be 'a writer'. Be writing.”

William Faulkner (1897–1962) American writer

“I feel that by writing I am doing what is far more necessary than anything else.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

“When I stop working the rest of the day is posthumous. I'm only really alive when I'm writing.”

Tennessee Williams (1911–1983) American playwright

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

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

“Every great man nowadays has his disciples, and it is always Judas who writes the biography.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

“Was not writing poetry a secret transaction, a voice answering a voice?”

Virginia Woolf book Orlando: A Biography

“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

“So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say.”

Virginia Woolf book A Room of One's Own

“[Science fiction is] out in the mainstream now. You can tell by the way mainstream literary authors pillage SF while denying they're writing it!”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

“I'm writing this book because we're all going to die”

Jack Kerouac book Visions of Cody

“If, when you wake up in the morning, you can think of nothing but writing… then you are a writer.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

“Those who write clearly have readers, those who write obscurely have commentators.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

“I turn sentences around. That's my life. I write a sentence and then I turn it around. Then I look at it and turn it around again…”

Philip Roth (1933–2018) American novelist

“The best way to become acquainted with a subject is to write about it.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

“If I do not write to empty my mind, I go mad.”

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement

“Reading a book is like re-writing it for yourself. You bring to a novel, anything you read, all your experience of the world. You bring your history and you read it in your own terms.”

Angela Carter (1940–1992) English novelist

“As a writer, I demand the right to write any character in the world that I want to write. I demand the right to be them, I demand the right to think them and I demand the right to tell the truth as I see they are.”

Quentin Tarantino (1963) American film director, screenwriter, producer, and actor

“Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write it.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

“I guess I’m just an old mad scientist at bottom. Give me an underground laboratory, half a dozen atom-smashers, and a beautiful girl in a diaphanous veil waiting to be turned into a chimpanzee, and I care not who writes the nation’s laws.”

S.J. Perelman (1904–1979) American humorist, author, and screenwriter

“one does not only wish to be understood when one writes; one wishes just as surely not to be understood.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

“If you can't annoy somebody, there is little point in writing.”

Kingsley Amis book Lucky Jim

“Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

“Writing, the art of communicating thoughts to the mind through the eye, is the great invention of the world… enabling us to converse with the dead, the absent, and the unborn, at all distances of time and space.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

“To write it, it took three months; to conceive it three minutes; to collect the data in it all my life.”

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

“She lives the poetry she cannot write.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

“Companions the creator seeks, not corpses, not herds and believers. Fellow creators the creator seeks -- those who write new values on new tablets. Companions the creator seeks, and fellow harvesters; for everything about him is ripe for the harvest.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

“The most extraordinary thing about writing is that when you've struck the right vein, tiredness goes. It must be an effort, thinking wrong.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

“One should never use exclamation points in writing. It is like laughing at your own joke.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

“I must be lean & write & make worlds beside this to live in.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

“I quarreled with every word, every phrase and expression, every image and letter as if they were the last I was ever going to write. I wrote and rewrote every line as if my life depended on it, and then rewrote it again.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Angel's Game

“Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy.”

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

“In our country we call this type of mother love teng ai. My son has told me that in men's writing it is composed of two characters. The first means pain; the second means love. That is a mother's love.”

Lisa See book Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

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

Stephen King (1947) American author

“The girls were expected to grow up to be somebody's wife. They were also expected to read and write, those being considered soft indoor jobs that were too fiddly for the boys.”

Terry Pratchett book The Wee Free Men

“Write what you know.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

“Writing is magic, as much the water of life as any other creative art. The water is free. So drink. Drink and be filled up.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

“Substitute 'damn' every time you're inclined to write 'very;' your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

“I write as if to save somebody’s life. Probably my own. Life is a kind of madness that death makes. Long live the dead because we live in them.”

Clarice Lispector book A Breath of Life

“Why did I write? Because I found life unsatisfactory.”

Tennessee Williams (1911–1983) American playwright

“Do not ask who I am and do not ask me to remain the same: leave it to our bureaucrats and our police to see that our papers are in order. At least spare us their morality when we write.”

Michel Foucault book The Archaeology of Knowledge

“When there's a moon the shadows in the house grow larger;
invisible hands draw back the curtains,
a pallid finger writes forgotten words on dust
of the piano…”

Yiannis Ritsos (1909–1990) Greek poet

“You don't write because someone sets assignments! You write because you need to write, or because you hope someone will listen or because writing will mend something broken inside you or bring something back to life.”

Joanne Harris book Blackberry Wine

“The thing all writers do best is find ways to avoid writing.”

Alan Dean Foster (1946) American fiction writer

“It's a damn good story. If you have any comments, write them on the back of a check.”

Erle Stanley Gardner (1889–1970) Lawyer, novelist, travel writer

“All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know.”

Ernest Hemingway book A Moveable Feast

“They think written words are even more powerful,’ whispered the toad. ‘They think all writing is magic. Words worry them. See their swords? They glow blue in the presence of lawyers.”

Terry Pratchett book The Wee Free Men

“I don't know what I think until I write it down.”

Joan Didion (1934) American writer

“If the writing is honest it cannot be separated from the man who wrote it.”

Tennessee Williams (1911–1983) American playwright