Quotes About Writing

My dear madam, I am not so ignorant of young ladies' ways as you wish to believe me; it is this delightful habit of journalizing which largely contributes to form the easy style of writing for which ladies are celebrated. Every body allows that the talent of writing agreeable letters is peculiarly female. Nature may have done something, but I am sure it must be essentially assisted by the practice of keeping a journal.

how good Mrs. West could have written such books and collected so many hard works, with all her family cares, is still more a matter of astonishment! Composition seems to me impossible with a head full of joints of mutton and doses of rhubarb.

Una persona che sa scrivere una lunga lettera con facilità non può scrivere male.

Everybody allows that the talent of writing agreeable letters is pecuiliarly female. Nature may have done something, but I am sure it must be essentially assisted by the practice of keeping a journal.

The indirect boast; for you are really proud of your defects in writing, because you consider them as proceeding from a rapidity of thought and carelessness of execution, which, if not estimable, you think at least highly interesting. The power of doing anything with quickness is always prized much by the possessor, and often without any attention to the imperfection of the performance.

Before the house-maid had lit the fire the next day, or the sun gained any power over the cold, gloomy morning in January, Marianne, only half dressed, was kneeling against one of the window-seats for the sake of all the little light she could command from it, and writing as fast as a continual flow of tears would permit her.

And while the abilities of the nine–hundredth abridger of the History of England, or of the man who collects and publishes in a volume some dozen lines of Milton, Pope, and Prior, with a paper from the Spectator, and a chapter from Sterne, are eulogized by a thousand pens — there seems almost a general wish of decrying the capacity and undervaluing the labour of the novelist, and of slighting the performances which have only genius, wit, and taste to recommend them.

Curajul imi creste in timp ce scriu.

THIS little work was finished in the year 1803, and intended for immediate publication.

Cuando un párrafo está bien escrito es un placer leerlo, sea de quien sea y proceda de donde proceda, quizá con mayor placer siendo su verdadero autor Mr. Hume o el doctor Robertson y no Caractus, Agrícola o Alfredo el Grande.

Jane had written the direction remarkably ill.

Perhaps I shall. Yes, yes, if you please, no reference to examples in books. Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands.

How ill I have written. I begin to hate myself.

No doubt he is a sensible man, and I suppose may have a natural talent for-thinks strongly and clearly-and when he takes a pen in hand, his thoughts naturally find proper words.

on my part, if a book is well written, I always find it too short.

As regularly as I can. But you recognize married ladies have never tons time for writing. My sisters can also write to me. They will have nothing else to do.

If a book is well written,I always find it to short.

Canciones y proverbios, todo habla de la fragilidad femenina. Pero quizá diga usted que todos han sido escritos por hombres. - Quizá lo diga... Pero, por favor, no ponga ningún ejemplo de libros. Los hombres han tenido todas la ventaja sobre nosotras al contar ellos la historia. La educación de ellos ha sido mucho más completa; la pluma ha estado en sus manos. No permitiré que los libros me prueben nada. (p. 259)

I have just received your letter, and shall devote this whole morning to answering it, as I foresee that a little writing will not comprise what I have to tell you.

I love the English language, playing with words, watching sentences fit together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle

One ought not to fall in love with someone by way of their writing. One must be especially careful if the writing is good, for then one assumes the writer is good, funny, clever, profound, sensitive, smart, wise, loving, and true. It is unfair to the writer and dangerous to the reader to hold the writer to the standards of his writing, for in his writing, the writer is his best self; in person, he is a person, and we all know what that means.

She did not think it any coincidence that ideas denigrating literary authorship had taken center stage simultaneously with the emergence of formerly silent voices for whom the act of writing, and publishing, had the deepest and most delicious possible meaning, simultaneously with the emergence of an audience for whom the act of thinking and writing was an act of skeptical anger, sometimes a transitional act to violence.

Every first draft is perfect because all the first draft has to do is exist.

Yo admiraba esa férrea disciplina que le permitía centrarse en escribir una novela sobre Alaska por la mañana y un libro sobre la Casa Blanca por la tarde, así que, en cierto modo, también admiré el hecho de que mantuviese su palabra y no volviese a hablarme nunca más.