Quotes about writing (5027 quotes, page 48)

“For poetry was all written before time was, and whenever we are so finely organized that we can penetrate into that region where the air is music, we hear those primal warblings, and attempt to write them down, but we lose ever and anon a word, or a verse, and substitute something of our own, and thus miswrite the poem. The men of more delicate ear write down these cadences more faithfully, and these transcripts, though imperfect, become the songs of the nations. For nature is as truly beautiful as it is good, or as it is reasonable, and must as much appear, as it must be done, or be known. Words and deeds are quite indifferent modes of the divine energy. Words are also actions, and actions are a kind of words.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson Music

1840s, Essays: Second Series (1844), The Poet

Time , Indifference , Beauty , Nature

“I was bitter about everything and at loose ends when I got out of the service. I think I turned to writing to get it off my chest.”

Rod Serling (1924–1975) American screenwriter

"Document H1000089528" http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC Contemporary Authors Online, Gale. 2010.
Other

Thinking

“Well, I think that when I’m writing about Haiti, I’m just writing one long, ongoing story. But I really did feel, like a lot of people did, that after the earthquake, there were suddenly two Haitis: the Haiti of before the earthquake and the Haiti of after the earthquake. So I feel that I’ve been writing about the first one much longer. And writing about the earthquake… it’s been such a short period of time and it’s still such a raw experience that the few things that I’ve written about it, I feel like I’ve written them to process it myself.”

Edwidge Danticat (1969) Novelist, short story writer, memoirist

On how she views Haiti since a major earthquake in in “An Interview | Edwidge Danticat” http://www.bkreview.org/fall-2018/an-interview-with-edwidge-danticat/ in The Brooklyn Review (Fall 2018)
Interviews

Feeling , Thinking , Time , People

“In some of the earlier work, I liked to keep readers guessing: one story asked a question, and another resolved it. For the stories I’m working on now—both the new ones and the older ones I’m revisiting—I want to wring everything out. That way, I don’t have to write separate stories for every character who surprises me.”

Edwidge Danticat (1969) Novelist, short story writer, memoirist

On how her short story writing style has evolved in “An Interview | Edwidge Danticat” http://www.bkreview.org/fall-2018/an-interview-with-edwidge-danticat/ in The Brooklyn Review (Fall 2018)
Interviews

Way , Question

“Along with plot, I am always thinking about structure. Sometimes the story guides you to the best structure for its telling. Using letters seemed like the best way to tell this story. When writing these letters, the characters are selecting what they want to tell. In this case, the woman is writing in a way that would not endanger her or her family if her letters were found by the military authorities who took over the country, and the man is writing with the urgency of someone who could die at any minute while at sea.”

Edwidge Danticat (1969) Novelist, short story writer, memoirist

On using an epistolary form for her short story “Children of the Sea” in “An Interview | Edwidge Danticat” http://www.bkreview.org/fall-2018/an-interview-with-edwidge-danticat/ in The Brooklyn Review (Fall 2018)
Interviews

Family , Country , Thinking , Way

“Certainly, female writing exists, but mainly because even writing is powerfully conditioned by the historical-cultural construction that is gender. That said, gender has an increasingly wide mesh, its rules have been relaxed, and it is more and more difficult to reconstruct what has influenced and formed us as writers…”

Elena Ferrante (1943) Italian writer

On the concept of “female writing” in “In a rare interview, Elena Ferrante describes the writing process behind the Neapolitan novels” https://www.latimes.com/books/la-ca-jc-elena-ferrante-interview-20180517-htmlstory.html in Los Angeles Times (2018 May 17)

“I don’t know if my writing has the energy you say it does. Of course, if that energy exists, it’s because either it finds no other outlets or, consciously or not, I’ve refused to give it other outlets. Of course, when I write, I draw on parts of myself, of my memory, that are agitated, fragmented, that make me uncomfortable. A story, in my view, is worth writing only if its core comes from there.”

Elena Ferrante (1943) Italian writer

On being told that her writing is energeticin “In a rare interview, Elena Ferrante describes the writing process behind the Neapolitan novels” https://www.latimes.com/books/la-ca-jc-elena-ferrante-interview-20180517-htmlstory.html in Los Angeles Times (2018 May 17)

Drawing , Making love , Memory , Parting

“No, I never plan my stories. A detailed outline is enough for me to lose interest in the whole thing. Even a brief oral summary makes the desire to write what I have in mind vanish. I am one of those who begin to write knowing only a few essential features of the story they intend to tell. The rest they discover line by line.”

Elena Ferrante (1943) Italian writer

On not planning her stories in advance in “In a rare interview, Elena Ferrante describes the writing process behind the Neapolitan novels” https://www.latimes.com/books/la-ca-jc-elena-ferrante-interview-20180517-htmlstory.html in Los Angeles Times (2018 May 17)

Making love

“I wrote my first story when I was fifteen, and sent it—to Adventure, I believe. Three years later I managed to break into Weird Tales. Three years of writing without selling a blasted line.”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

I never have been able to sell to Adventure; guess my first attempt cooked me with them for ever!
From a letter to H. P. Lovecraft (c. July 1933)
Letters

“That I address you as a friend is no formality. I own no foes. My business in life has been for the past 33 years to enlist the friendship of the whole of humanity by befriending mankind, irrespective of race, colour or creed. … We have no doubt about your bravery or devotion to your fatherland, nor do we believe that you are the monster described by your opponents… But your own writings and pronouncements and those of your friends and admirers leave no room for doubt that many of your acts are monstrous and unbecoming of human dignity, especially in the estimation of men like me who believe in human friendliness. Such are your humiliation of Czechoslovakia, the rape of Poland and the swallowing of Denmark. I am aware that your view of life regards such spoliations as virtuous acts. But we have been taught from childhood to regard them as acts degrading humanity…Hence we cannot possibly wish success to your arms…. But ours is a unique position. We resist British imperialism no less than Nazism… If there is a difference, it is in degree. One-fifth of the human race has been brought under the British heel by means that will not bear scrutiny… Our resistance to it does not mean harm to the British people. We seek to convert them, not to defeat them on the battle-field… No spoliator can compass his end without a certain degree of co-operation, willing or unwilling, of the victim…. The rulers may have our land and bodies but not our souls…. We know what the British heel means for us and the non-European races of the world. But we would never wish to end the British rule with German aid… We have found in non-violence a force which, if organized, can without doubt match itself against a combination of all the most violent forces in the world… If not the British, some other power will certainly improve upon your method and beat you with your own weapon. You are leaving no legacy to your people of which they would feel proud.”

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India

Letter to Hitler. 24 December 1940. Quoted from Koenraad Elst: Return of the Swastika (2007). (Also in https://web.archive.org/web/20100310135408/http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/articles/fascism/gandhihitler.html)
1940s

Childhood , Soul , Friendship , Success

“Whosoever seeks the truth will not proceed by studying the writings of his predecessors and by simply accepting his own good opinion of them. Whosoever studies works of science must, if he wants to find the truth, transform himself into a critic of everything he reads.”

Alhazen (965–1038) Arab physicist, mathematician and astronomer

He must examine tests and explanations with the greatest precision and question them from all angles and aspects.
Ehsan Masood, Science and Islam https://www.amazon.com/Science-Islam-History-Icon/dp/1785782029/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1544708566&sr=1-3&keywords=ehsan+masood p: 169

Truth , Science , Study , Reading

“Here’s my attitude, and I’m sort of sorry to say this sometimes – but there are people who try and elevate film music - of all kinds – to being the great twentieth century classical music, and my opinion is it just isn’t. It’s very straightforward, major/minor or modal writing. The only time you get any kind of originality is usually in the timbres and the sounds and the mixture of elements. But to get through a scene it’s either happy, or sad – and it’s either going forward in action or it’s not – and it can be ironic, which means you’ve got to switch from major to minor frequently. But it’s not rocket science. It’s a lot of skills – a lot of political skills, frankly. It’s being in a room and playing off fifty opinions from studios, producers, directors, sometimes actors – and coming out the end with something that vaguely represents music. And frequently it doesn’t. The minute you try to get original or break the box – unless you’ve got either a very experimental or powerful director, it’s probably not going to happen.”

Graeme Revell (1955) New Zealand musician

Time , Box , People , Music

“I am mimetic. If I write a book set in the seventeenth century, I write in a Baroque style. If I’m writing a book set in a newspaper office, I write in Journalese.”

Umberto Eco (1932–2016) Italian semiotician, essayist, philosopher, literary critic, and novelist

quoted in Marco Belpoliti, " Umberto Eco: How I Wrote my Books http://en.doppiozero.com/materiali/interviste/umberto-eco-how-I-wrote-my-books" (2015)

Books

“This has always bothered me, the division: as though there was something about women who write that is very different.”

Annie Proulx (1935) American novelist, short story and non-fiction author

On literary prizes only awarded to women in “Annie Proulx: ‘I’ve had a life. I see how slippery things can be’” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jun/05/annie-proulx-ive-had-a-life-i-see-how-slippery-things-can-be in The Guardian (2016 Jun 5)
Personal life and writing career

Women

“The construction of short stories calls for a markedly different set of mind than work on a novel, and for me short stories are at once more interesting and more difficult to write than longer work. The comparative brevity of the story dictates more economical and accurate use of words and images, a limited palette of events, fewer characters, tighter dialogue, strong title and punctuation that works to move the story forward. If the writer is trying to illustrate a particular period or place, a collection of short stories is a good way to take the reader inside a house of windows, each opening onto different but related views—a kind of flip book of place, time and manners.”

Annie Proulx (1935) American novelist, short story and non-fiction author

On her short story collection Close Range: Wyoming Stories in “An Interview with Annie Proulx” https://www.missourireview.com/article/an-interview-with-annie-proulx/ in The Missouri Review (1999 Mar 1)
Personal life and writing career

Time , Housing , Strong , Books

“Place and history are central to the fiction I write, both in the broad, general sense and in detailed particulars. Rural North America, regional cultures in critical economic flux, the images of an ideal and seemingly attainable world the characters cherish in their long views despite the rigid and difficult circumstances of their place and time. Those things interest me and are what I write about. I watch for the historical skew between what people have hoped for and who they thought they were and what befell them.”

Annie Proulx (1935) American novelist, short story and non-fiction author

On the subjects that she most likes to write about in “An Interview with Annie Proulx” https://www.missourireview.com/article/an-interview-with-annie-proulx/ in The Missouri Review (1999 Mar 1)
Personal life and writing career

Time , History , Hope , People

“I’ve always said that Chris was the greatest songwriter to ever come out of Seattle. Jimi Hendrix could play the guitar like crazy, but Chris had the song-writing chops that we all sort of hoped to get to at different points in our songwriting careers. He had a way he could wrap a melody around odd time signatures and weird parts and make them catchy. He was a beautiful wordsmith. If you look at his lyrics, he obviously was processing his pain and depression, and all of those things. I think that’s part of what people, myself included, responded to when he was singing. With the songwriting he had that voice, there’s not too many people that have that many options with their voice. He could do a lot of different things with it, and have a lot of different characters in that voice. I feel so lucky that I got to be in a project with him, got to hang out with him, and just sort of witness his greatness.”

Chris Cornell (1964–2017) American singer-songwriter, musician

Jeff Ament talking about Cornell on NBA.com podcast NBA Soundsystem ** Pearl Jam's Jeff Ament on Chris Cornell's death and depression, 30 May 2017 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9buvTFxf2EA,

Singing , Pain , Time , Beauty

“I was on tour with Soundgarden, and I remember writing down the title. The title immediately brought up the idea of the song, which is that someone is so distracted by a new person or a new thing in their life that they kind of forgot that they had given up on life. Sometimes it just happens without us even noticing.”

Chris Cornell (1964–2017) American singer-songwriter, musician

On the inspiration behind the song "Nearly Forgot My Broken Heart" ** Chris Cornell Flashback Q&A: 'We Have to Be Aware That Life Is So Short', Yahoo!, May 19, 2017 https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/chris-cornell-flashback-qa-aware-life-short-023857577.html,
On songwriting

Idea , Life , Personality

“I’m completely self-taught on guitar- limited me in some ways but very helpful in others. My only goal to playing was to write songs.”

Chris Cornell (1964–2017) American singer-songwriter, musician

Chris Cornell: The American Songwriter Twitterview, American Songwriter, November 1, 2011 https://americansongwriter.com/2011/11/chris-cornell-the-american-songwriter-twitterview/,
Soundgarden Era

Way , Self-confidence , Help

“I am not writing for those who do not believe that there is such a thing as clairvoyance, nor am I seeking to convince those who are in doubt about the matter… I am addressing myself to the better-instructed class who know that clairvoyance exists, and are sufficiently interested in the subject to be glad of information as to its methods and possibilities; and I would assure them that what I write is the result of much careful study and experiment.”

Charles Webster Leadbeater book Clairvoyance

Clairvoyance (1903), Chapter One

Study

“Life after death — Life in the universe is absolute; in creation it is always relative. That is why people should not cry at death; it is not something horrible or ghastly. Their friends and loved ones have simply returned to their homeland. The books and writings received by writers through channelled sources are a sign that this message about life on the other side of death is beginning to get through to humanity.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

Maitreya's Teachings - The Laws of Life (2005)

Making love , People , Universe , Books

“The books that I have written are sent out with no claim for their acceptance. They may, or may not, be correct, true and useful. It is for you to ascertain their truth by right practice and by the exercise of the intuition. Neither I nor A. A. B. is the least interested in having them acclaimed as inspired writings…”

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

Extract from a Statement by the Tibetan

Truth , Books , Exercises

“If you write, you should write about the truth.”

Sebastian Gorka (1970) American politician

The War for America's Soul, ISBN 978-1-62157-940-3

Truth

“The single most important thing you can do politically for gay rights is to come out. Not to write a letter to your congressman but to come out.”

Barney Frank (1940) American politician, former member of the House of Representatives for Massachusetts

Quoted in "The Path to Gay Rights: How Activism and Coming Out Changed Public Opinion" by Jeremiah J. Garretson, chapter 9, pg 229.

“The mystery story is a kind of writing that need not dwell in the shadow of the past and owes little if any allegiance to the cult of the classics. It is a good deal more than unlikely that any writer now living will produce a better historical novel than Henry Esmond, a better tale of children than The Golden Age, a sharper social vignette than Madame Bovary, a more graceful and elegant evocation than The Spoils of Poynton, a wider and richer canvas than War and Peace or The Brothers Karamazov.”

Raymond Chandler book The Simple Art of Murder

But to devise a more plausible mystery than The Hound of the Baskervilles or The Purloined Letter should not be too difficult. Nowadays it would be rather more difficult not to.
Introduction
The Simple Art of Murder (1950)

Peace , War , Past , Children

“By the way, would you convey my compliments to the purist who reads your proofs and tell him or her that I write in a sort of broken-down patois which is something like the way a Swiss-waiter talks, and that when I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will remain split, and when I interrupt the velvety smoothness of my more or less literate syntax with a few sudden words of barroom vernacular, this is done with the eyes wide open and the mind relaxed and attentive. The method may not be perfect, but it is all I have.”

Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) Novelist, screenwriter

In a letter to the editor of the Atlantic Monthly. [Hiney, Tom, Frank MacShane, 2000, The Raymond Chandler Papers: Selected Letters and Nonfiction, 1909-1959, New York, Atlantic Monthly Press, p. 77, ISBN 0871137860]

Way , Perfection , God , Reading

“Let me tell you a story: Once there was a republic. It had its constitution, its laws, its freedoms, a president, a congress and courts of law. Everyone could assemble, associate, speak and write with complete freedom.”

Fidel Castro (1926–2016) former First Secretary of the Communist Party and President of Cuba

ibid., p. 89-901
History Will Absolve Me (October 16th, 1953)

Law , Freedom

“I meet amateur composers all the time who have music flooding through their heads, apparently, but they have no technical ability at all. They don’t actually have the faintest idea how to put it down on the page. These days you can actually get away with that, because you sort of mess around and track it, and all those things. But to my mind, that balance between the excitement of what is called inspiration or just simply a good idea, and the technical routine that goes into writing music down at all, is what makes a composer. You can’t have one without the other and be a complete composer. I can’t imagine how you could.”

Richard Rodney Bennett (1936–2012) English composer and pianist

Time , Imagination , Music , Idea

“So we have scholars accepting two different paradigms, both of which complement each other and should therefore have been treated as two parts of a whole: on the one hand, a widespread network of archaeological sites of a vast, highly-developed civilization (the Harappan civilization) lasting over thousands of years, which has allegedly left no literary records at all although it had a writing system; and, on the other, a full-fledged developed culture and civilization (the Vedic civilization) which has left a vast and detailed body of organized literature (unparalleled by any other known civilization of the same period) although it had no system of writing at all, but which has left absolutely no archaeological traces behind, both located in more or less the very same area!”

Shrikant Talageri (1958) Indian author

This contradiction was first pointed out by David Frawley
The Rigveda and the Avesta (2008)

Literature , Parting

“In keeping with a pattern which will be familiar to anyone studying the writings of supporters of the Aryan invasion theory, such unnatural or anomalous phenomena do not make these scholars rethink their theory; it only makes them try to think of ways to maintain their theory in the face of inconvenient facts.”

Shrikant Talageri (1958) Indian author

The Rigveda: A Historical Analysis (2000), Chapter 7 : The Indo-European Homeland

Study , Support , Thinking , Way

“I told about Vasyl to French composer Pierre Thilloy, my good acquaintance, and offered him to write a small piece. He creates music which is easy to listen to, and he agreed immediately and said he would like to visit the premiere.”

Vasyl Slipak (1974–2016) Ukrainian opera singer

2017
Nicolas Krauze, conductor, the Orchestre de Chambre Nouvelle Europe (France). “He loved Ukraine above all”. The Day. Кyiv.ua. - 2017. - 7 March. https://day.kyiv.ua/en/article/culture/he-loved-ukraine-above-all

Music

“The most personal and intense instance of Mussolini’s coming to grips with Marxism is his confrontation with Lenin and the Bolshevik revolution. During his stay in Switzerland, Mussolini had had contact, if not with Lenin himself, with men around him; he had read some of Lenin’s writings; Angelica Balabanov, Mussolini’s former tutor, was now with Lenin in Russia… But it is typical of Mussolini’s prevailing interests of the moment that, like his dialogue with Marxism, even the duel with Lenin appears at first as merely one further aspect of the struggle against Germany.”

Ernst Nolte (1923–2016) German historian and philosopher

Source: Three Faces of Fascism: Action Française, Italian Fascism, National Socialism (1965), p. 176

Personality , Appearance , Reading , Men

“This letter, if judged by the novelty and profundity of ideas it contains, is perhaps the most substantial piece of writing in the whole literature of mankind.”

Hermann Weyl (1885–1955) German mathematician

Symmetry (1952) (quote on p. 138; referring to a letter by Évariste Galois to Auguste Chevalier from May 29, 1832, two days before Galois’ death, containing a testamentary summary of Galois’ discoveries)

Idea , Literature

“Recipe idea: take on fire extinguisher and pour out all the contents. Mix down a nice bright emulsion paint to the consistency of full fat milk, stirring constantly to remove any lumps. Pour into the extinguisher, screw on cap tightly and write on things up to 50 feet high. Re-use by swapping over the CO2 charged canister (costs about one pound). The perfect accompaniment to a night out drinking heavily with friends.”

Banksy pseudonymous England-based graffiti artist, political activist, and painter

Cut It Out (2004)

Drink , Night , Painting , Perfection