Quotes About Writing

we produced a bundle of pens, a copious supply of ink, and a goodly show of writing and blotting paper. For there was something very comfortable in having plenty of stationary.

Here on the head of an empty barrel stood on end were an ink-bottle, some old stumps of pens, and some dirty playbills; and against the wall were pasted several large printed alphabets in several plain hands. "What are you doing here?" asked my guardian. "Trying to learn myself to read and write," said Krook.

For a week or a fortnight I can write prodigiously in a retired place (as at Broadstairs), and a day in London sets me up again and starts me. But the toil and labour of writing, day after day, without that magic lantern, is IMMENSE!!... My figures seem disposed to stagnate without crowds about them.

Dinner over, we produced a bundle of pens, a copious supply of ink, and a goodly show of writing and blotting paper. For, there was something very comfortable in having plenty of stationery.

He'd write letters by the ream, if it was a capital offence!

I never thought, when I used to read books, what work it was to write them.... It's work enough to read them sometimes.... As to the writing, it has its own charms.

I have nothing else to tell; unless, indeed, I were to confess that no one can ever believe this narrative, in the reading, more than I have believed it in the writing.

PREFACE TO THE 1857 EDITION I

All writers misspeak, revealing not what they thought they said, but almost what they were afraid to say.

Consider one of the most useful verbs you'll ever see: To say. Novices often use different words to say said, especially when writing dialogue. So they say that a president argues, declares, and cajoles. A ballplayer stutters, barks, muses, and mumbles. A philosopher cogitates, elucidates, complains, and demurs. These synonyms disrupt the flow of ideas. Avoid that distraction; just say said. If someone says something interesting, you don't need to dress it up with synonyms.

Because writing is a creative process. One idea sparks our imagination, so we often go off on a tangent to explore that new idea. Then another idea sparks a new idea, so we go off on another tangent. But to stay on course—not just in a paragraph, but also in a larger piece as well—we need to make sure every paragraph states and develops just one idea.

All writing explores action and change. The most important tool for that exploration is the verb. The verb makes sentences move.

If the sentence is the most important unit of writing, the paragraph comes a close second place. All writing is a march of paragraphs, each of which provides a clear step forward in the progress of the piece.

Any fool can write a book, and most of them are doing it

No less than the tourist, the writer of history profits from maps.

Any fool can write a book and most of them are doing it; but it takes brains to build a house.

Writing doesn't come real easy to me. I couldn't write a novel in a year. It wouldn't be readable. I don't let an editor even look at it until the second year, because it would just scare them. I just have to trust that all these scraps and dead-ends will find a way.

[T]he satirist shoots to kill while the humorist brings his prey back alive. Swift destroyed the human race; Mark Twain and Thurber enabled it to go on. We human beings are all absurd variations of one another in any case, and this is what comedy of all kinds puts down on paper.

...for a writer humor is a rubber sword — it allows you to make a point without drawing blood.

I take the music of language very seriously. Like a heartbeat, it exists right below consciousness — it animates and infuses your language with life.... A good sentence should sound good and feel good and roll comfortably off your tongue, not simply serve as a conveyor for ideas.

I thank you for such a long letter, and yet if I might choose, the next should be a longer. I think a letter just about three days long would make me happier than any other kind of one, if you please...

Oh, I can't bother to write. If it's too long to telegraph I just let it go.

...a letter is a joy of earth — it is denied the gods.

Now that is the way to write — peppery and to the point. Mush-and-milk journalism gives me the fan-tods.