Quotes About Writing

One method of economy is 'leaving out' - firstly, everything that by the writer's standards is irrelevamt, in the second place everything that is obvious, i.e. which the reader can and should supply out of his own imagination. 'The more bloody good stuff you cut out the more bloody good your novel will be,' Hemingway advised a young writer.

You write not for children but for yourself. And if by good fortune children enjoy what you enjoy, why then you are a writer of children's books.

I turned silences and nights into words. What was unutterable, I wrote down. I made the whirling world stand still.

He who writes carelessly confesses thereby at the very outset that he does not attach much importance to his own thoughts.

No one writes anything worth writing, unless he writes entirely for the sake of his subject.

There are, first of all, two kinds of authors: those who write for the subject's sake, and those who write for writing's sake. [...] The truth is that when an author begins to write for the sake of covering paper, he is cheating the reader; because he writes under the pretext that he has something to say.

For an author to write as he speaks is just as reprehensible as the opposite fault, to speak as he writes; for this gives a pedantic effect to what he says, and at the same time makes him hardly intelligible

That you should write down valuable ideas that occur to you as soon as possible goes without saying: we sometimes forget even what we have done, so how much more what we have thought.

When some political or ecclesiastical pamphlet, or novel, or poem is making a great commotion, you should remember that he who writes for fools always finds a large public.

Payment and reserved copyright are at bottom the ruin of literature. Only he who writes entirely for the sake of what he has to say writes anything worth writing. It is as if there were a curse on money: every writer writes badly as soon as he starts writing for gain.

Exaggeration in every sense is as essential to newspaper writing as it is to the writing of plays: for the point is to make as much as possible of every occurrence. So that all newspaper writers are, for the sake of their trade, alarmists: this is their way of making themselves interesting.

The truth is that when an author begins to write for the sake of covering paper, he is cheating the reader; because he writes under the pretext that he has something to say.

Exaggeration of every kind is as essential to journalism as it is to the dramatic art; for the object of journalism is to make events go as far as possible. Thus it is that all journalists are, in the very nature of their calling, alarmists; and this is their way of giving interest to what they write. Herein

It would be of general service to German authors if they discerned that while a man should, if possible, think like a great mind, he should speak the same language as every other person. Men should use common words to say uncommon things.

Tan sólo escribe cosas dignas de ser leídas el que únicamente escribe para decir algo.

Quem escreve para os tolos encontra sempre um grande público.

Weinigen schrijven zoals een architect bouwt. Verreweg de meesten schrijven zoals men domino speelt.

To write truthfully you must live, and you must feel what you are living.

N O T H I N G I would like to write one of those sophisticated stories in which even though nothing much happens there's lots to write about. That can't be done in Kashmir. It's not sophisticated, what happens here. There's too much blood for good literature. Q 1: Why is it not sophisticated? Q 2: What is the acceptable amount of blood for good literature? y

As a writer, one spends a lifetime journeying into the heart of language, trying to minimize, if not eliminate, the distance between language and thought.

NOTHING I would like to write one of those sophisticated stories in which even though nothing much happens there's lots to write about. That can't be done in Kashmir. It's not sophisticated, what happens here. There's too much blood for good literature. Q 1: Why is it not sophisticated? Q 2: What is the acceptable amount of blood for good literature?

I would like to write one of those sophisticated stories in which even though nothing much happens there's lots to write about. That can't be done in Kashmir. It's not sophisticated, what happens here. There's too much blood for good literature. Q1: Why is it not sophisticated? Q2: What is the acceptable amount of blood for good literature?

I wanted to write in my journal but couldn't bring myself to. There are so many shades to what passed through me in those days. And I would shrink from committing myself to paper because the light would change before the word was out, the ink was dry.

I cannot recall the words of my first poem but I remember a promise I made my pen never to leave it lying in somebody else's blood.