Quotes About Writing

I have never believed in the axiom that a writer should first and foremost write about what he knows. I think it's a piece of misinformation.

Every great and original writer, in proportion as he is great or original, must himself create the taste by which he is to be relished.

Every great and original writer, in proportion as he is great and original, must himself create the taste by which he is to be relished.

Cunning authors cut to be quoted.

Victor Hugo, author of Les Misérables, forced himself to write by disrobing and giving his clothing to his valet with strict instructions that it not be returned until he had written the allotted pages.

If you steal from one author, it's plagiarism; if you steal from many, it's research.

Whenever you write down a perception or an idea, you reinforce the behavior of being perceptive or creative. Whenever you fail to describe or record such insights, you reinforce the behavior of being unperceptive and uncreative. Simple, isn't it?

those tribes whose infants creep and crawl tend to have more complex societies, higher technology, and some form of written language. Most tribes that restrict their infants from crawling have no writing of their own and can be taught to read only with great difficulty.

If you would not be forgotten As soon as you are dead and rotten, Either write things worth reading, Or do things worth the writing.

Broadly speaking, short words are best, and the old words, when short, are best of all.

For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history myself.

I am never going to have anything more to do with politics or politicians. When this war is over I shall confine myself entirely to writing and painting.

The joy of writing. The power of preserving. Revenge of a mortal hand.

I prefer the absurdity of writing poems to the absurdity of not writing poems.

Unfortunately, poetry is not born in noise, in crowds, or on a bus. There have to be four walls and the certainty that the telephone will not ring. That's what writing is all about.

I usually write for the individual reader -though I would like to have many such readers. There are some poets who write for people assembled in big rooms, so they can live through something collectively. I prefer my reader to take my poem and have a one-on-one relationship with it.

Backward ran sentences until reeled the mind.

Books and all forms of writing are terror to those who wish to suppress the truth.

I'm not one of those writers I learned about who get up in the morning, put a piece of paper in their typewriter machine and start writing. That I've never understood.

Books and all forms of writing are terror to those who wish to suppress truth.

With films, I just scribble a couple of notes for a scene. You don't have to do any writing at all, you just have your notes for the scene, which are written with the actors and the camera in mind. The actual script is a necessity for casting and budgeting, but the end product often doesn't bear much resemblance to the script--at least in my case.

When I 'bout 17 I left Kentucky and goes to Indiana and white folks sends me to school to larn readin' and writin', but I got tired of dat and run off and jine de army. Dat in 1876 and dey sends me to Arizona.

The man who comes to writing late, but is in essence a writer, may sometimes gain as much as he has lost: his experience of life has given him a subject, he is spared the youthful writer's self-torment and soul-searching.