Art Of Writing Quotes

• I can’t write five words but that I change seven.

  Dorothy Parker

  Writing, Revision, Seven

  Dorothy Parker, Stuart Y. Silverstein (2009). “Not Much Fun: The Lost Poems of Dorothy Parker”, p.47, Simon and Schuster

  68 Copy quote

  Show source

• You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

  Ray Bradbury

  Inspirational, Writing, Reality

  65 Copy quote

• You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.

  Saul Bellow

  Inspirational, Change, Inspiring

  "Bellow in his own words". www.theguardian.com. April 6, 2005.

  34 Copy quote

  Show source

• Writing and rewriting are a constant search for what it is one is saying.

  John Updike

  Art, Philosophy, Writing

  44 Copy quote

• I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil.

  Truman Capote

  Believe, Writing, Editing

  Lawrence Grobel, Truman Capote (1986). “Conversations with Capote”, Plume

  73 Copy quote

  Show source

• Great is the art of beginning, but greater is the art of ending.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Goodbye, Art, Business

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow “The Complete Poems of Longfellow”, Library of Alexandria

  47 Copy quote

  Show source

• When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, 'I am going to produce a work of art.' I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing.

  George Orwell

  Art, Lying, Book

  George Orwell (1970). “A Collection of Essays”, p.315, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it - whole-heartedly - and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.

  Arthur Quiller-Couch

  Writing, Pieces, Crafts

  On the Art of Writing "On Style" (1916)

  48 Copy quote

  Show source

• The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Inspirational, Life, Art

  24 Copy quote

• Sit down and put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.

  Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

  Writing, Judging, Down And

  26 Copy quote

• I have rewritten — often several times — every word I have ever published. My pencils outlast their erasers.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Writing, Revision, Pencils

  Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (1973). “Strong opinions”, McGraw-Hill Companies

  22 Copy quote

  Show source

• I rewrote the ending of 'Farewell to Arms' 39 times before I was satisfied.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Farewell, Writing, Arms

  33 Copy quote

• Plot is no more than footprints left in the snow after your characters have run by on their way to incredible destinations.

  Ray Bradbury

  Running, Character, Snow

  10 Copy quote

• The craft or art of writing is the clumsy attempt to find symbols for the wordlessness.

  John Steinbeck

  Art, Writing, Crafts

  John Steinbeck (1990). “Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters”, p.8, Penguin

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• Read over your compositions and whenever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.

  Samuel Johnson

  Art, Writing, Thinking

  "The Sayings of Doctor Johnson".

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  Inspirational, Funny, Writing

  30 Copy quote

• Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.

  Stephen King

  Kings, Writing, Heart

  Stephen King (2000). “On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft”, p.271, Simon and Schuster

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• The art of writing has for backbone some fierce attachment to an idea.

  Virginia Woolf

  Art, Philosophy, Writing

  Virginia Woolf, David Bradshaw (2009). “Selected Essays”, p.21, Oxford University Press

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The art of writing is to explain the complications of the human soul with the simplicity that can be universally understood.

  Alan Sillitoe

  Art, Writing, Simplicity

  Alan Sillitoe (1988). “The far side of the street: fifteen short stories”

  22 Copy quote

  Show source

• The art of writing is the art of doing what you think you're doing. This is not as simple as it sounds. It implies a very difficult undertaking: the necessity to think. And it implies the requirement to think out three separate, very hard problems: What is it you want to say? How are you going to say it? Have you really said it?

  Ayn Rand

  Art, Writing, Simple

  3 Copy quote

• There is an art of reading, as well as an art of thinking, and an art of writing.

  Clarence Day

  Art, Book, Reading

  8 Copy quote

• The great art of writing is knowing when to stop.

  Josh Billings

  Art, Writing, Knowing

  7 Copy quote

• I definitely have loads of respect for writers and the art of writing.

  Molly Shannon

  Art, Writing, Load

  Source: collider.com

  3 Copy quote

  Show source

• The art of writing books is not yet invented. But it is at the point of being invented. Fragments of this nature are literary seeds. There may be many an infertile grain among them: nevertheless, if only some come up!

  Novalis

  Art, Book, Writing

  "Pollen and Fragments". Book by Novalis. Fragment No. 114, 1798.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• An exquisite invention this, Worthy of Love's most honeyed kiss,-- This art of writing billet-doux-- In buds, and odors, and bright hues! In saying all one feels and thinks In clever daffodils and pinks; In puns of tulips; and in phrases, Charming for their truth, of daisies.

  Leigh Hunt

  Art, Clever, Writing

  3 Copy quote