Quotes About Writing

Each time I see a split infinitive, an inconsistent tense structure or the unnecessary use of the passive voice, I blister.

Even after I'd published three books and had been writing full-time for twenty years, my father continued to urge me to go to law school.

If I had the luxury of working as a full time writer, I think you would see novels appearing on a much more regular, and frequent, basis.

Quando comecei a escrever histórias policiais verídicas, prometi a mim mesma que me lembraria que escrevo sobre a perda de seres humanos. Torço para que meu trabalho possa de alguma maneira salvar possíveis vítimas, alertar do perigo.

There are only two ways, really, to become a writer. One is to write. The other is to read.

The beginning and the end are never really the journey of discovery for me. It is the middle that remains a puzzle until well into the writing. That's how life is most of the time, isn't it? You know where you are and where you hope to wind up. It's the getting there that's challenging.

I know who we are, and how we got that way. We are writers. We danced with the words, as children, in what became familiar patterns. The words became our friends and our companions, and without even saying it aloud, a thought danced with them: I can do this. This is who I am.

I've discovered that sometimes writing badly can eventually lead to something better. Not writing at all leads to nothing.

Writing is the gift of your presence forever.

When she got older, my mother, who was not a sentimental type at all, started to play around with poems. They weren't very good poems, but at every occasion she would write a poem and give it to us. And those are completely and utterly treasured." Her voice soft and warm and a little plaintive, she added, "Writing is the gift of your presence forever.

And don't you, as do I, wish that person had left such a thing behind? Doesn't that argue for doing that yourself, no matter how terrifying or impossible writing may sometimes seem? It doesn't really matter what you say. It matters that you said it.

Mostly I read and walked for miles at night along the beach, writing bad blank verse and searching endlessly for someone wonderful who would step out of the darkness and change my life. It never crossed my mind that that person could be me.

Hmmm," my mother said, like she did when I gave her a composition to read and she was going to tell me to take another shot at it.

Does anyone write texts or emails as substantial or as telling as what we find in the letters of the past?

People have writer's block not because they can't write, but because they despair of writing eloquently.

To my dear and honored Mother, whose life, no less than her pen, has been devoted to the welfare of others, this little book is affectionately dedicated.

This paper will serve instead of a confidential friend into whose ear I might pour forth the overflowings of my heart. It will not sympathize with my distresses, but then, it will not laugh at them, and, if I keep it close, it cannot tell again; so it is, perhaps, the best friend I could have for the purpose.

I have omitted to give a detail of his words, from a notion that they would not interest the reader as they did me, and not because I have forgotten them.

My object in writing the following pages, was not simply to amuse the Reader, neither was it to gratify my own taste, nor yet to ingratiate myself with the Press and the Public: I wished to tell the truth, for the truth always conveys its own moral to those who are able to receive it.

I hope members with younger children will enjoy sharing my first read-aloud chapter book with them. It's about a little princess who longs to get to know her subjects so that she can be a good Queen one day. I loved writing it!

Paper is more patient than man.

I want to write, but more than that, I want to bring out all kinds of things that lie buried deep in my heart.

I want to go on living even after my death! And therefore I am grateful to God for this gift, this possibility of developing myself and of writing, of expressing all that is in me. I can shake off everything if I write; my sorrows disappear; my courage is reborn. But, and that is the great question, will I ever be able to write anything great, will I ever become a journalist or a writer?

I can shake off everything if I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn. But, and that is the greatest question, will I ever be able to write anything great, will I ever become a journalist or a writer? I hope so, oh, I hope so very much, for I can recapture everything when I write, my thoughts, my ideas and my fantasies.