Writing Quotes - Page 2

• The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.

  Albert Camus

  Civilization, Purpose, Destroying

  50 Copy quote

• I learned that you should feel when writing, not like Lord Byron on a mountain top, but like child stringing beads in kindergarten, - happy, absorbed and quietly putting one bead on after another.

  Brenda Ueland

  Children, Creativity, Joy

  Brenda Ueland (2013). “If You Want to Write”, p.37, Simon and Schuster

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• If I don't write to empty my mind, I go mad.

  Lord Byron

  Mad, Mind, Literature

  Lord Byron (1990). “The Sayings of Lord Byron”, p.32, Gerald Duckworth & Co

  37 Copy quote

  Show source

• And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.

  Sylvia Plath

  Life, Sad, Creativity

  Sylvia Plath (2013). “The Journals of Sylvia Plath”, p.85, Anchor

  94 Copy quote

  Show source

• A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.

  Robert Frost

  Love, Life, Poetry

  Robert Frost, Lawrance Roger Thompson (1964). “Selected letters”

  30 Copy quote

  Show source

• I get an urge, like a pregnant elephant, to go away and give birth to a book.

  Stephen Fry

  Pregnancy, Book, Elephants

  7 Copy quote

• I admire anybody who has the guts to write anything at all.

  E. B. White

  Admiration, Admire, Guts

  E. B. White (2011). “In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers”, p.209, Cornell University Press

  28 Copy quote

  Show source

• The best fantasy is written in the language of dreams. It is alive as dreams are alive, more real than real, for a moment at least, that long magic moment before we wake.

  George R. R. Martin

  Dream, Real, Magic Moments

  George R.R. Martin (2008). “Dreamsongs: A RRetrospective”, p.215, Hachette UK

  25 Copy quote

  Show source

• I get up every day and work in the morning. I have my coffee and get to work. On good days I look up and it's dark outside and the whole day has gone by and I don't know where it's gone. But there's bad days, too. Where I struggle and sweat and a half hour creeps by and I've written three words. And half a day creeps by and I've written a sentence and a half and then I quit for the day and play computer games. You know, sometimes you eat the bear and sometimes the bear eats you. [Laughs]

  George R. R. Martin

  Morning, Coffee, Struggle

  7 Copy quote

• Reread, rewrite, reread, rewrite. If it still doesn't work, throw it away. It's a nice feeling, and you don't want to be cluttered with the corpses of poems and stories which have everything in them except the life they need.

  Helen Dunmore

  Nice, Feelings, Needs

  "Ten rules for writing fiction" by Elmore Leonard, Diana Athill, Margaret Atwood, Roddy Doyle, Helen Dunmore, Geoff Dyer, Anne Enright, Richard Ford, Jonathan Franzen, Esther Freud, Neil Gaiman, David Hare, PD James, AL Kennedy, www.theguardian.com. February 19, 2010.

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• Tomorrow may be hell, but today was a good writing day, and on the good writing days nothing else matters.

  Neil Gaiman

  May, Matter, Today

  "Somewhat Less Sinister Ducks". Personal Website, journal.neilgaiman.com. April 23, 2004.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Worry, Moveable Feast, Written

  Ernest Hemingway (2014). “Moveable Feast: The Restored Edition”, p.34, Simon and Schuster

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• You only learn to be a better writer by actually writing.

  Doris Lessing

  10 Copy quote

• It's not enough to create magic. You have to create a price for magic, too. You have to create rules.

  Eric Burns

  Magic, Enough

  9 Copy quote

• Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it.

  Hannah Arendt

  Inspirational, Life, Inspiring

  Hannah Arendt (1970). “Men in Dark Times”, p.115, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  68 Copy quote

  Show source

• Fiction is the truth inside the lie.

  Stephen King

  Life, Beautiful, Truth

  Stephen King (2011). “Danse Macabre”, p.430, Simon and Schuster

  24 Copy quote

  Show source

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

  Moliere

  Love, Funny, Money

  114 Copy quote

• Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.

  Gene Fowler

  Inspirational, Blood, Story Writers

  Attributed without citation in Janice R. Matthews et al. "Successful Scientific Writing", p. 53, 2000.

  59 Copy quote

  Show source

• Use your imagination. Trust me, your lives are not interesting. Don't write them down.

  W. P. Kinsella

  Imagination, Interesting, Use

  12 Copy quote

• Writing comes more easily if you have something to say.

  Sholem Asch

  Ifs, Creative Writing, Great Writing

  24 Copy quote

• Writing is the hardest work in the world not involving heavy lifting.

  Pete Hamill

  World, Heavy, Hardest

  12 Copy quote
• 

  Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

  Honesty, Integrity, Character

  1847; quoted by propagandist and language maven William Safire, New York Times Magazine, 13 December 1998.

  118 Copy quote

  Show source

• Writing is a struggle against silence.

  Carlos Fuentes

  Life, Beautiful, Struggle

  64 Copy quote

• Write. Rewrite. When not writing or rewriting, read. I know of no shortcuts.

  Larry L. King

  Blogging, Shortcuts, Knows

  47 Copy quote

• Metaphors have a way of holding the most truth in the least space.

  Orson Scott Card

  Editing, Space, Inspire

  Orson Scott Card (1996). “Alvin Journeyman: The Tales of Alvin Maker”, p.33, Macmillan

  56 Copy quote

  Show source