Quotes About Writing

Nipples may be said to resemble the ripest of raspberries or perhaps even a thimble, but "why take the trouble when the trouble taken is so evident," though Gass himself is willing to do it and make it look effortless. Maybe they really look like "the lightly chewed ends of large pencil erasers," and for someone who spends his days at his desk that image can prove surprisingly effective.

Any one may mouth out a passage with theatrical cadence or get upon stilts to tell his thoughts. But to write or speak with propriety and simplicity is a more difficult task.

Don't write so that you can be understood, write so that you can't be misunderstood.

most authorities believe that the proto-Semitic inscriptions the Petries first found at Serabit derived from Egyptian hieratic or hieroglyphic writing.

This combination of papyrus and a vowel-and-consonant alphabet allowed, for the first time in human history, the potential for mass literacy.

In the words of classicist Jennifer Wise, "With little exaggeration, it could be said that the entirety of the Odyssey ultimately boils down to one simple technological problem: the epic hero's inability to write home."35

Humans abstract and record information in five major ways: with writing, mathematical notation, painting/photography/videography, maps, and clocks—that is, we can abstract and record verbal, numerical, visual, spatial, and temporal information.

Schmandt-Besserat contends that the first writing system—the familiar Sumerian cuneiform script—evolved in this way directly from the token system.13

Schmandt-Besserat's work caused a stir mainly because it seemed to contradict the "pictographic theory," that writing evolved directly from pictures—a theory that is still taught to schoolchildren. Her "token hypothesis" was so bold and so different from the pictographic theory that it could not help but evoke controversy.14

The older pictographic theory still has some virtues. First proposed by William Warburton, an Anglican cleric who eventually became bishop of Gloucester and who wrote in the 1730s, it was, and probably remains, the most commonly accepted theory about the origins of writing.

most paleographers now believe that the "idea of writing" must have spread along with commerce, most likely from Sumer to Egypt.33

the reason why Gilgamesh needed the assent of his elders to defend his city was probably that he did not have at his disposal the writing tools necessary to command absolute political control over large numbers of citizens. By the same token, Uruk's literate, scribal elite was not yet able to disempower its illiterate masses.

In ancient societies, the law functioned as a two-edged sword; while standardizing procedure and bringing it out into the open, the law also concentrated power in those few who could read and write.

The scribe was no mere linguistic technician, but rather the sole possessor of the skill set that made civilization hum, a sort of investment banker, engineer, and diplomat all rolled up into one. Or, in the words of the linguist Ignaz Gelb, "Writing exists only in a civilization, and a civilization cannot exist without writing."47

As populations grow beyond Dunbar's number, face-to-face contact no longer suffices to maintain political control. At this point, writing supplies the best mechanism for communicating among large numbers of people, and power naturally accrues to the literate. Consequently, societies with high rates of literacy, such as Athens, tend to have more smoothly running republics than those with low rates, such as the late Roman one.

Vigorous writing is concise.

Writing is magic for those willing to follow their imagination to a region where anything is possible.

An important aspect of the current situation is the strong social reaction against suggestions that the home language of African American children be used in the first steps of learning to read and write.

If, looking back upon the lengthened way My feet have trod, since, long ago, I left Those well-known shores, and when mine eyes are filled With tears, I take the pencil in its turn, and shading light the landscape spread below..."

I like to be surprised. Fresh implications and plot twists erupt as a story unfolds. Characters develop backgrounds, adding depth and feeling. Writing feels like exploring.

There are thousands of thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up the pen and writes.

There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up the pen to write.

I have stolen more quotes and thoughts and purely elegant little starbursts of writing from the Book of Revelation than anything else in the English language," Hunter wrote. "I love the wild power of the language and the purity of the madness that governs it and makes it music.

I secretly worship God," Hunter wrote near the end of his life. "He had the good judgment to leave me alone to write a few genuine black-on-white pages by myself.