Quotes About Writing

To write history one must be more than a man, since the author who holds the pen of this great justiciary must be free from all preoccupation of interest or vanity.

I wake up ready to right and I feel like I'm on the right side of history every day.

Journalism is the first draft of history

Between history and the novel stands biography, their unwanted offspring, which has brought a great embarrassment to them both.

In a way, I'm very interested in writing about Maine, because I think Maine represents its own kind of history. It's the oldest state, and it's the whitest state.

It seems disingenuous to ask a writer why she, or he, is writing about a violent subject when the world and history are filled with violence.

Every great writer is a writer of history, let him treat on almost what subject he may.

I'm not looking to write the great American novel, win a Pulitzer or teach history. I write to entertain my readers.

I beg your pardon: correct English is the slang of prigs who write history and essays. And the strongest slang of all is the slang of poets.

Writing history and biography for kids calls for special skills that can only be acquired through practice and that are different from those required for an adult audience.

I think history is collective memories. In writing, I'm using my own memory, and I'm using my collective memory.

I'd like to write a history, maybe of the Reformation.

I like reading history, and actually most authors enjoy the research part because it is, after all, easier than writing.

Advice to Persons About to Write History - Don't.

The best and only true history we have. Everyone interested in creative writing should know this book.

My dear Smollett ... disgraces his talent by writing those stupid romances called history.

It is well known how the monks wrote silly lives of Catholic Saints over the manuscripts on which the classical works of ancient heathendom had been written.

Any fool can make history, but it takes a genius to write it.

Academics have given up trying to recover an honest picture of the past and have decided that their history-writing should be simply an instrument of moral hand-wringing.

Go home and write / a page tonight. / And let that page come out of you - / Then, it will be true.

The reason 99% of all stories written are not bought by editors is very simple. Editors never buy manuscripts that are left on the closet shelf at home.

Novel writing wrecks homes.

I am away from home and must always write home, even if any home of mine has long since floated away into eternity.

Editors never buy manuscripts that are left on the closet shelf at home.