Written Quotes

• We write to taste life twice, in the moment, and in retrospection.

  Anais Nin

  Love, Writing, Heart

  "Woman as Writer" by Jeannette L. Webber and Joan Grumman, (p. 38), 1978.

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• The Epistles in the New Testament have all of them a particular reference to the condition and usages of the Christian world at the time they were written.

  Joseph Butler

  Christian, World, Usage

  Joseph Butler, Stephen L. Darwall (1983). “Five Sermons, Preached at the Rolls Chapel and A Dissertation Upon the Nature of Virtue”, p.25, Hackett Publishing

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• To get the right word in the right place is a rare achievement. To condense the diffused light of a page of thought into the luminous flash of a single sentence, is worthy to rank as a prize composition just by itself...Anybody can have ideas--the difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph.

  Mark Twain

  Writing, Light, Ideas

  57 Copy quote

• Writing gives you the illusion of control, and then you realize it's just an illusion, that people are going to bring their own stuff into it.

  David Sedaris

  Writing, Giving, People

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• Poetry is when you make new things familiar and familiar things new

  Rory Sutherland

  Writing, Photographer, Great Photography

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• Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day.

  Orson Scott Card

  Writing, Past, Ideas

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• The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.

  Sylvia Plath

  Inspirational, Life, Beautiful

  Sylvia Plath (2007). “The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath”, p.545, Anchor

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• Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.

  George Orwell

  Struggle, Book, Writing

  George Orwell (1970). “A Collection of Essays”, p.316, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Anybody can have ideas-the difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph.

  Mark Twain

  Writing, Plain Language, Ideas

  Mark Twain (1990). “Mark Twain's Letters, Volume 2: 1867-1868”, p.183, Univ of California Press

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• A man will turn over half a library to make one book.

  Samuel Johnson

  Book, Writing, Men

  Quoted in James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791) (entry for 6 Apr. 1775)

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

  Cyril Connolly

  Inspirational, Respect, Clever

  New Statesman 25 Feb. 1933

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• If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write, because our culture has no use for it.

  Anais Nin

  Writing, Commitment, Culture

  "Woman as Writer" by Jeannette L. Webber and Joan Grumman, (p. 38), 1978.

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• The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas.

  Linus Pauling

  Motivational, Inspiring, Success

  126 Copy quote

• Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don't see any.

  Orson Scott Card

  Writing, Past, Ideas

  17 Copy quote

• No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else's draft.

  H. G. Wells

  Passion, Writing, Editing

  32 Copy quote

• The worst thing you can do is nothing.

  Terry Pratchett

  Motivational, Change, Positive

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• When you catch an adjective, kill it.

  Mark Twain

  Writing, Editing, Plain Language

  Mark Twain, Michael Patrick Hearn (1981). “The annotated Huckleberry Finn: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”, Random House Value Pub

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• No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Reading, Book, Writing

  "The Figure a Poem Makes". Book by Ernest Hemingway, 1939.

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

  Terry Pratchett

  Block, Writing, California

  Interview with SFBC's Joyce Wiley, www.lspace.org. 1996.

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• I never write "metropolis" for seven cents when I can write "city" and get paid the same.

  Mark Twain

  Writing, Cities, Seven

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• The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Inspirational, Motivational, Teaching

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• As to the adjective: when in doubt, strike it out.

  Mark Twain

  Writing, Doubt, Adjectives

  Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894) ch. 11

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• Easy reading is damn hard writing.

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

  Powerful, Reading, Writing

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• A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit.

  Richard Bach

  Perseverance, Writing, Editing

  Richard Bach (2012). “A Gift of Wings”, p.9, Dell

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• The most beautiful things are those that madness prompts and reason writes.

  Andre Gide

  Beautiful, Writing, Madness

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