Quotes About Writing

Looking back, I have to laugh. You know why Martin Bligh was strenuous? Whenever I didn't know what to write next, I put a swift river in front of his horse and sent the two of them across!

One of the things Rune admired about Lucy was her impractical curiosity. She was writing notes in the margins.

almost painful, and even the scrawled

Waiting for inspiration to write is like standing at the airport waiting for a train.

The more you think back on an event, the worse it gets in your memory. The best way to remember something accurately is to write it down before your cynical imagination gets carried away.

The only reason for being a professional writer is that you can't help it.

A writer writes not because he is educated but because he is driven by the need to communicate. Behind the need to communicate is the need to share. Behind the need to share is the need to be understood. The writer wants to be understood much more than he wants to be respected or praised or even loved.

A writer writes not because he is educated but because he is driven by the need to communicate. Behind the need to communicate is the need to share. Behind the need to share is the need to be understood.

The only reason for being a professional writer is that you just can't help it.

I can barely make out my own handwriting in the semidarkness, but no matter. I don't know if anyone will ever read this. Maybe someone will. If so, that someone can only be you. I try to imagine who you might be and where you might be reading this. Are you comfortable? Do you feel secure? Let me write these words to you, then, personally. I greet you, my friend. Thanks for your time and attention, even your curiosity. Welcome to my world. Welcome to my iron lodge. Welcome to Leavenworth.

Writing was a gift eagerly accepted by the ancients. Unfortunately, hiding among the neat rows of carefully incised script was an unwelcome demon—misogyny. In trying to understand what went wrong between the sexes, these two cultures are at the pivot of history.

There is one fact that can be established: the only phenomenon which, always and in all parts of the world, seems to be linked with the appearance of writing … is the establishment of hierarchical societies, consisting of masters and slaves, and where one part of the population is made to work for the other part.5

Writing is thinking and thinking is hard work.

Always speak the truth, think before you speak, and write it down afterwards.

The twelve jurors were all writing very busily on the slates. What are they doing? Alice whispered to the Gryphon. They can't have anything to put down yet, before the trial's begun. They're putting down their names, the Gryphon whispered in reply, for fear they should forget them before the end of the trial.

Perhaps the hardest thing in all literature— at least I have found it so: by no voluntary effort can I accomplish it: I have to take it as it comes— is to write anything original. And perhaps the easiest is, when once an original line has been struck out, to follow it up, and to write any amount more to the same tune.

A great deal of the bad writing in the world comes simply from writing too quickly. Of course you reply, "I do it to save time". A very good object, no doubt: but what right have you to do it at your friend's expense? Isn't his time as valuable as yours?

Sí que lo olvidarás, si no lo escribes.

And now if you'll excuse me, I should like to finish my book, alone, without the presence of a single ringleted girl to disrupt me. If you should come for me at dinner and find me in my chair, gone to the angels at last, you shall know that I died alone, which is to say in a state of utter bliss.

I am hard at work on the second draft ... Second draft is really a misnomer as there are a gazillion revisions, large and small, that go into the writing of a book.

Writers are also sort of like vultures, but with fewer ethics.

Alliteration. It's when you repeat the same consonant in a phrase," Memphis explained. "Huh. I was hoping it was something dirty.

Swell. Isn't there some kinda ghost primer in this joint: Reading, Writing, 'Rithmetic, Ridding Yourself of Soul-Stealing Demons for Fun and Profit? Why isn't there ever anything useful around here?" Mabel handed Sam a watercress sandwich. "Thanks, Mabes.

In the firelight, Mother's elegant handwriting dances on the page.