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

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

  Ray Bradbury

  Inspirational, Writing, Reality

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• 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.

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

  John Updike

  Art, Philosophy, Writing

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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)

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

  Gustave Flaubert

  Inspirational, Life, Art

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• 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

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• 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

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

  Ernest Hemingway

  Farewell, Writing, Arms

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• 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

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• 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".

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• 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

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• 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

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• The art of writing is mysterious; the opinions we hold are ephemeral , and I prefer the Platonic idea of the Muse to that of Poe, who reasoned, or feigned to reason, that the writing of a poem is an act of the intelligence. It never fails to amaze me that the classics hold a romantic theory of poetry, and a romantic poet a classical theory.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Art, Writing, Ideas

  Jorge Luis Borges (1978). “Doctor Brodie's Report”, Plume Books

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• It is worth remembering that every writer begins with a naively physical notion of what art is. A book for him or her is not an expression or a series of expressions, but literally a volume, a prism with six rectangular sides made of thin sheets of papers which should include a cover, an inside cover, an epigraph in italics, a preface, nine or ten parts with some verses at the beginning, a table of contents, an ex libris with an hourglass and a Latin phrase, a brief list of errata, some blank pages, a colophon and a publication notice: objects that are known to constitute the art of writing.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Art, Latin, Book

  "Evaristo Carriego" by Jorge Luis Borges, (Ch. 3), 1930.

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• 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.

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• 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

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

  Molly Shannon

  Art, Writing, Load

  Source: collider.com

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• Many great authors of the 19th century wrote under conditions of strict censorship. The great thing about the art of writing a novel, is that you can write about anything. All you have to say is that it's fiction.

  Orhan Pamuk

  Art, Writing, Fiction

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• Translation is entirely mysterious. Increasingly I have felt that the art of writing is itself translating, or more like translating than it is like anything else

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Art, Writing, Mysterious

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• The great art of writing is the art of making people real to themselves with words.

  Logan Pearsall Smith

  Art, Real, Writing

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• 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

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