Quotes About Writing

Él, tan educado y pulido con su vocabulario ante la gente, sentía siempre, en la intimidad de su diario, una invencible necesidad de escribir obscenidades. Por razones que no comprendía bien, la coprolalia le hacía bien

The symbiotic relationship between reading and writing is a cornerstone of our individual intellectual journey and our educational system. We write as an act of self-expression. We read because language renders unto us the vitality of real and imagined experience.

When you write from the heart, you not only light the dark path of your readers, you light your own way as well.

The only prerequisites for a writer are a word processor and thick skin.

It was always difficult to maintain author integrity when the facts did not support the sensationalism required by the employers, and best not to put oneself in such a position.

Into the paradise of euphony, the good poet must introduce hell. Broken paradises are the only kind worth reading.

Siobhan said that when you are writing a book you have to include some descriptions of things. I said that I could take photographs and put them in the book. But she said the idea of a book was to describe things using words so that people could read them and make a picture in their own head.

Well, we're meant to be writing stories today

Siobhan said that I should write something I would want to read myself. Mostly I read books about science and maths. I do not like proper novels. In proper novels people say things like, I am veined with iron, with silver and with streaks of common mud. I cannot contract into the firm fist which whose clench who do not depend on stimulus. What does this mean? I do not know. Nor does Father. Nor does Siobhan or Mr. Jeavons. I have asked them.

Siobhan said that I should write something I would want to read myself.

How alike they are, she and her mother, these blank sheets on which men have written their stories, the white paper under the words, making all their achievements possible and contributing nothing to the meaning. She

What could be more lovely than writing a book about something you love?

That's writing, huh. What does it do?" "It's like talking, but it makes no sound.

I think of myself as more of a 12th-Century artist than a modern one—I write, not for my own pleasure or the pleasure of my audience, but to praise God.

Though he had spoken of the subject many times, in the silence of his room he added the powerful kind of phrasing that would not have occurred to him as he spoke, because it's origins were in the collaboration of hand and pen.

You must choose, and choose aggressively. One of the most painful things about writing

Writing beautifully—calligraphy—was China's first graphic art form. Although elsewhere in the world people drew first and learned to write later, in China, the reverse was true. First you learned to write beautifully, and then you painted. After mastering those twin skills, you could move on to writing poetry, but many chose to remain just calligraphers, a highly appreciated art form in China. Another

The Phoenicians are also credited with the first alphabet. Chinese and Egyptian languages used pictographs, drawings depicting objects or concepts. Babylonian, which became the international language in the Middle East, also

The Greeks and Romans also sometimes used metallic lead to write or draw on papyrus, which is the origin of the modern expression "lead pencil"—despite the fact that a modern pencil contains no lead.

Flugschriften, or "quick writing.

So, Strand looked at me, and he said, 'You should write about all this someday.' And I said, 'You mean about all the terrible privations and wrenching traumas from my childhood?' And he said, 'Yes, it would be hilarious!' And I said, 'You mean...nonfiction?

Why do you think I'm obsessed with this idea of giving the world an alphabet-soup enema?' (This was our code language for wanting to be a writer.) After a very long, Viennese pause, he said, 'Why do you think you are?' And I said, 'I don't know...Prolonged exposure to radiation from violent events in deep space?

Reading any novel, good or mediocre, is a workshop for a writer.

That great moment when a plot twist appears in your story, one you never thought of, one coming from some hidden place in your mind.