Quotes on writing

“You should write because you love the shape of stories and sentences and the creation of different words on a page. Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write.”

Annie Proulx

“A well-composed book is a magic carpet on which we are wafted to a world that we cannot enter in any other way.”

Caroline Gordon

“You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.”

Jack London

“Imagination is like a muscle. I found out that the more I wrote, the bigger it got.”

Philip José Farmer

“A short story is a different thing altogether – a short story is like a quick kiss in the dark from a stranger.”

Stephen King

“That's what fiction is for. It's for getting at the truth when the truth isn't sufficient for the truth.”

Tim O'Brien

“Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.”

Stephen King

“Fiction is art and art is the triumph over chaos… to celebrate a world that lies spread out around us like a bewildering and stupendous dream.”

John Cheever

“To write well, express yourself like the common people, but think like a wise man.”

Aristotle

“Written words can also sing.”

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o

“She was a beautiful dreamer. The kind of girl, who kept her head in the clouds, loved above the stars and left regret beneath the earth she walked on.”

robert m drake

“Indeed, learning to write may be part of learning to read. For all I know, writing comes out of a superior devotion to reading.”

Eudora Welty

“Death is the easy part, the hard part is living and knowing you could be so much more then you’re willing to be.”

robert m drake

“A tamed woman will never leave her mark in the world.”

robert m drake

“Sometimes to self-discover you must self-destruct.”

robert m drake

“I am a strong believer in the tyranny, the dictatorship, the absolute authority of the writer.”

Philip Pullman

“If I lived a million lives, I would've felt a million feelings and I still would've fallen a million times for you.”

robert m drake

“Blessed are the weird people: poets, misfits, writersmystics, painters, troubadoursfor they teach us to see the world through different eyes.”

Jacob Nordby

“Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.”

Kurt Vonnegut

“Madness and chaos are self-destructing but over thinking is the suicide.”

robert m drake

“Suddenly, everything was beautiful. The way she viewed the world was nothing more but a reflection of herself.”

robert m drake

“Inspiration comes of working every day.”

Charles Baudelaire

“some moments are nice, some arenicer, some are even worthwritingabout.”

Charles Bukowski

“There comes a time in your life when you have to choose to turn the page, write another book or simply close it.”

Shannon L. Alder

“Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.”

Leonard Cohen

“Cynics are simply thwarted romantics.”

William Goldman

“You do not immortalize the lost by writing about them. Language buries, but does not resurrect.”

John Green

“Autobiography begins with a sense of being alone. It is an orphan form.”

John Berger

“Like madness is the glory of this life.”

Shakespeare

“She looked away. Her attitude seemed to suggest that she had finished with him, and would be obliged if somebody would come and sweep him up.”

P.G. Wodehouse

“Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer.”

E.M. Forster

“We remember the past, live in the present, and write the future.”

Shaun David Hutchinson

“CLEMENTINE: This is it, Joel. It's going to be gone soon.JOEL: I know.CLEMENTINE: What do we do?JOEL: Enjoy it.”

Charlie Kaufman

“My life will be the best illustration of all my work.”

Hans Christian Andersen

“Paper is more patient than man.”

Anne Frank

“If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster.”

Isaac Asimov

“Write what you know. That should leave you with a lot of free time.”

Howard Nemerov

“So what? All writers are lunatics!”

Cornelia Funke

“Definition of rock journalism: People who can't write, doing interviews with people who can't think, in order to prepare articles for people who can't read.”

Frank Zappa

“What is your advice to young writers?” “Drink, fuck and smoke plenty of cigarettes.”

Charles Bukowski

“Some stories have to be written because no one would believe the absurdity of it all.”

Shannon L. Alder

“I'm writing a book. I've got the page numbers done.”

Steven Wright

“Writer’s block is only a failure of the ego.”

Norman Mailer

“Beauty is not who you are on the outside, it is the wisdom and time you gave away to save another struggling soul like you.”

Shannon L. Alder

“it is all very well for you to write simply and the simpler the better. But do not start to think so damned simply. Know how complicated it is and then state it simply.”

Ernest Hemingway

“The shame of being a man - is there any better reason to write?”

Gilles Deleuze

“Politeness is the first thing people lose once they get the power.”

Amit Kalantri

“Digression is the soul of wit. Take the philosophic asides away from Dante, Milton or Hamlet's father's ghost and what stays is dry bones.”

Ray Bradbury

“The job of feets is walking, but their hobby is dancing.”

Amit Kalantri

“Take care of your costume and your confidence will take care of itself.”

Amit Kalantri