Quotes About Writing

Mom — the person most likely to write an autobiography and never mention herself.

The average pencil is seven inches long, with just a half-inch eraser — in case you thought optimism was dead.

If it doesn't work horizontally as prose... it probably won't work any better vertically pretending to be poetry.

The trick to writing an aphorism is to place a period at the point where you're inclined to say, "in other words...."

A blog is a message in a bottle, both in purpose and likely readership.

Typography is the craft of endowing human language with a durable visual form.

If language is lost, humanity is lost. If writing is lost, certain kinds of civilization and society are lost, but many other kinds remain - and there is no reason to think that those alternatives are inferior.

Typographic style is founded not on any one technology of typesetting or printing, but on the primitive yet subtle craft of writing.

Here's freedom to him who would read; Here's freedom to him who would write; None ever feared that the truth should be heard, But them that the truth would indict.

It is most true, stylus virum arguit, - our style betrays us.

Hinc quam sic calamus saevior ense, patet. The pen worse than the sword.

They lard their lean books with the fat of others' works.

Hence it is clear how much more cruel the pen is than the sword. (Hinc Gham Sit Calmus Saevior Ense Patet)

No one ever committed suicide while reading a good book, but many have tried while trying to write one.

the ratio of time spent reading vs. writing is well over 10:1.

Because this ratio is so high, we want the reading of code to be easy, even if it makes the writing harder. Of course there's no way to write code without reading it, so making it easy to read actually makes it easier to write.

Il campo @author di un Javadoc ci dice chi siamo. Siamo gli autori. E una caratteristica degli autori è che hanno dei lettori. In effetti, è responsabilità degli autori riuscire a comunicare bene coi loro lettori. La prossima volta che scriverete una riga di codice, ricordatevi che voi ne siete gli autori, e che scrivete a dei lettori che vi giudicheranno per quello che avrete scritto.

One of the more common motivations for writing comments is bad code.

Indeed, the ratio of time spent reading versus writing is well over 10 to 1. We are constantly reading old code as part of the effort to write new code. ...[Therefore,] making it easy to read makes it easier to write.

Every time you write a comment, you should grimace and feel the failure of your ability of expression.

all winter, far into the night, we read books and we practised writing. 20.

The writers of these reports used typewriters and carbon paper, making the correction of mistakes difficult, and they were often better at fighting their ships than writing reports, so there are a good many misspellings and grammatical errors in these pages.

You know, my first three or four drafts, you can see, are on legal pads in long hand. And then I go to a typewriter, and I know everybody's switching to a computer. And I'm sort of laughed at.