Quotes About Writing

Was it not I who populated with them all these pages—just recently no more than white rectangular deserts? Without me, would they ever be seen by those whom I shall lead behind me along the narrow paths of lines?

If circumstances should make it impossible (temporarily, I hope) for me to be a Russian writer, perhaps I shall be able, like the Pole Joseph Conrad, to become for a time an English writer... ("Letter To Stalin")

Get the paper quick, maybe it's there... I read the paper with my eyes (that's not mistake: My eyes are like a pen now, or a calculator, something you hold in your hands, something you feel is not you- a tool).

What a long way it is from one life to another, yet why write if not for that distance.

Sometimes I imagine that writing is a survey I carry out, asking everyone I encounter, in reality or in fiction: How much of your life is lived to be known by others? To be understood? How much of your life is lived to know and understand others? But like all surveys the questions are simplifications. How much does one trust others to be known, to be understood; how much does one believe in the possibilities of one person's knowing and understanding another.

Often I think that writing is a futile effort; so is reading; so is living. Loneliness is the inability to speak with another in one's private language. That emptiness is filled with public language or romanticized connections. But one must be cautious when assuming meaning. A moment of recognition between two people only highlights the inadequacy of language. What can be spoken does not sustain; what cannot be spoken undermines.

This is what I know: if we stopped writing now, we would never make it to Paris," Fabienne said. "You see, it's like a game. We don't know when the game is going to be over, but since we've already begun, and since we don't have another game to play just now, we may as well stick with this one.

All people lie, in their writing as much as in their lives. It frustrates me that I hold on to an unrealistic belief: there is some irrefutable truth in each mind, and the truth is told without concealment or distortion in a letter or in a journal entry.

Adjectives are my guitly pleasure.

What a long way it is from one life to another: yet why write if not for that distance; if things can be let go, every before replaced by an after.

If you want to learn something, read about it. If you want to understand something, write about it. If you want to master something, teach it.

John wrote with a very deep love for the human race and a concern for its future.

He rams his quill with scandal and with scoff, But 'tis so very foul, it won't go off.

I'm not an actual author but an accidental one.

A novel, basically, is writing one sentence — then, without violating the scope of the first one, writing the next sentence.

It is when the suffering of others becomes part of my own experience that I truly know what it is to live and what it is to write. Nothing in the world, perhaps, is so likely to forge a connection between people as pain, because the connection that comes from that source comes from deep in the heart.

At first, writing actually felt the more arduous of the two activities. But in order to reach cultural-center nirvana, I forced myself to continue. I was young then and it was no easy matter to persuade my bottom to maintain such constant intimacy with my chair

It is when the suffering of others becomes part of my own experience that I truly know what it is to live and what it is to write.

This time, Fusako was able to express herself with fluency and candor. The bold letters she had been writing week after week had granted her an unexpected new freedom.

I still have no way to survive but to keep writing one line, one more line, one more line...

We have no idea what the builders of Göbekli Tepe actually called the place. With the appearance of writing, we are beginning to hear history through the ears of its protagonists. When Kushim's neighbours called out to him, they might really have shouted 'Kushim!' It is telling that the first recorded name in history belongs to an accountant, rather than a prophet, a poet or a great conqueror.1

Between the years 3500 BC and 3000 BC, some unknown Sumerian geniuses invented a system for storing and processing information outside their brains, one that was custom-built to handle large amounts of mathematical data. The Sumerians thereby released their social order from the limitations of the human brain, opening the way for the appearance of cities, kingdoms and empires. The data-processing system invented by the Sumerians is called 'writing'.

Con la aparición de la escritura empezamos a oír la historia a través de los oídos de sus protagonistas. Cuando los vecinos de Kushim lo llamaban, podían haber gritado realmente «¡Kushim!». Es revelador que el primer nombre registrado en la historia pertenezca a un contable, y no a un profeta, un poeta o un gran conquistador.

Qué lástima!, los primeros textos de la historia no contienen ideas filosóficas, ni poesía, leyendas, leyes, ni siquiera triunfos reales. Son documentos económicos aburridos que registran el pago de impuestos, la acumulación de deudas y la posesión de propiedades