Quotes About Writing

Once again, the expression uttered (in speech or writing) is not the sole or even the primary object of translation when the force of an utterance is what matters, as it always does.

Anyone who believes you can't change history has never tried to write his memoirs.

Truth might be stranger than fiction, but it needs a better editor.

Some people may be more gifted than others, but excellence in writing, as in any art form or craft, involves discipline and practice.

Writing is no answer but when you feel deeply there is little else to do.

There is indeed a strange prejudice against Quotation.

The desire to write perfectly of beautiful happenings is, as the saying runs, old as the hills and as immortal.

Yes, I repeat, there is always something to be done with words, and here are thirty-two authentic words from the Master Philologist himself, not to speak of three commas and a full-stop. Oh, I shall certainly go far with this.

Aspiring novelists should be taught that the old adage, "Write about what you know," isn't limited to what you have personally experienced. Vicarious experience is also a great part of what you know. Read a lot of history and it becomes part of your store of knowledge, part of what you're prepared to write about. The same goes for stories and memories that other people share with you.

in the years ahead discover his métier as a writer, that enduring profession of skilled liars

It is unnecessary, he added, to pressure students to produce speech or writing in the second language before they are ready, because "output" contributes nothing. It is the result of second language acquisition, not the cause. In fact, putting pressure on children to speak or write can be counterproductive, increasing stress and raising the affective filter.

we are unaware of any convincing evidence that languages are acquired through "practice." On the other hand, studies have shown that students can reach high levels of proficiency through input alone—that is, with little or no production of the language through speech or writing.

Do you know how it is to be locked in your mind, words and writing become your best friend.

Love the rain especially when I am writing or designing, my creativity is extra focused.

You lie awake at 3 in the morning thinking of story ideas. You're online at 8 a.m. on a Sunday or midnight on a Wednesday. It's a job that you never push aside.

I wrote the lies of my farewell with two fingers.

I only have two fingers left. I wrote the lies of my farewell with two fingers. That is the truth. We are evil. They are kids. We are evil.

I like to be alone so I can write. But focus can hurt you. I don't want to be some stress casualty in early middle age.

Much like Hemmingway. If something is easy to read, it's hard to write; if something is hard to read, it's easy to write. I want everything I write to be easy to read. I shall want every word to count. If it's described as simplistic, then I shall consider that a compliment.

For life is short and the art of writing books is very, very long.

Several passages induced the shiver of aesthetic bliss in my spine that Nabokov famously described as the indicator of good and true writing. The whole thing is by turns hilarious and hilariously sad, artfully pin-holed with melancholy (my favorite drink)… Empty the Sun is an impressive achievement, as well as an excellent and I believe as yet unused name for a rock band.

Ours is a precarious language, as every writer knows, in which the merest shadow line often separates affirmation from negation, sense from nonsense, and one sex from the other.

As most real writers do, he wrote because he had something to say, not because of any specific ambition to be a writer.

Writing it down is the way I make it real, the way I find my way into what it is I feel. The words on paper or computer screen tell me more than what I knew before I wrote them, help me remember what I'm afraid I'll forget, let me keep what I don't want to lose, say to me: You were here.