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Writing Quotes

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Writing Quotes

“Constant reading will pull you into a place - a mind-set, if you like the phrase - where you can write eagerly and without self-consciousness.”

Ifs Writing Mind Self Reading Consciousness Constant Phrases Self Consciousness Mind Set

Book:On Writing

Source: On Writing

“The world may be divided into people that read, people that write, people that think, and fox-hunters.”

People Thinking World Writing May Divided Foxes Hunters

Author:William Shenstone

“The end of satire is the amendment of vices by correction; and he who writes honestly is no more an enemy to the offender than the physician to the patient when he prescribes harsh remedies.”

Writing Ends Enemy Patient Vices Honestly Satire Amendments Remedy Physicians Harsh Corrections Offenders

Book:The Poetical Works of John Dryden

Source: The Poetical Works of John Dryden

“For a while, I felt a little self-impelled to write Lou Reed Kind of songs. I should have understood that a Lou Reed song was anything I wanted to write about.”

Should Writing Kind Littles Self Wanted Song Felt Understood Should Have Reeds

Author:Lou Reed

“In the present state of the world it is difficult not to write lampoons.”

World Writing States Difficult Satire

Author:Juvenal

“And I plan to write a sequel to Dragon Rider.”

Writing Plans Dragons Riders Sequels

Author:Cornelia Funke

“The whole race is a poet that writes down / The eccentric propositions of its fate.”

Writing Whole Race Fate Poet Propositions Eccentric

Book:The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens

Source: The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens

“I don't want to write without a sense of drama, without passion, or without both eyes open to the world around me.”

World Want Writing Eye Passion Drama

Author:Gloria Naylor

“For a young and presumptuous poet a disposition to write satires is one of the most dangerous he can encourage. It tempts him to personalities, which are not always forgiven after he has repented and become ashamed of them.”

Writing Young Dangerous Poet Personality Ashamed Satire Forgiven Disposition Presumptuous

Book:The Works of William Cowper: Comprising His Poems, Correspondence, and Translations

Source: The Works of William Cowper: Comprising His Poems, Correspondence, and Translations

“I tend to write about my anxieties - it's what I'm afraid will happen. And I write a story working it out.”

Writing Stories Happens Anxiety Working It

Author:Rainbow Rowell

“Your poems are of interest to mankind; your liver isn't. Drink till you write well and feel sick. Bless your poems and be damned to you.”

Feels Writing Wells Interest Mankind Drink Sick Bless Drunkenness Liver

Author:Fernando Pessoa

“I sometimes think, with a sad delight, that if one day, in a future I no longer belong to, these sentences, that I write, last with praise, I will at last have the people who understand me, those mine, the true family to be born in and be loved... I will only be understood in effigy, when affection no longer repays the dead the unaffection that was, when living.”

People Ifs Thinking Writing Sometimes Lasts Born Mines One Day Understood Praise Affection Delight Sentences Immortality Understand Me True Family

Author:Fernando Pessoa

“I don't write in Portuguese. I write myself.”

Writing Language Portuguese

Author:Fernando Pessoa

“When I write, I solemnly visit myself.”

Author:Fernando Pessoa

“Ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write [create]? Dig into yourself for a deep answer.”

Writing Night Asks Hours Answers Silent

Author:Rainer Maria Rilke

“I have this feeling of wending my way or plundering through a mysterious jungle of possibilities when I am writing. This jungle has not been explored by previous writers. It never will be explored. It's endlessly varying as we progress through the experience of time. These words that occur to me come out of my relation to the language which is developing even as I am using it.”

Way Writing Feelings Language Progress Possibility Relation Mysterious My Way Developing Jungle

Author:William Stafford

“A student comes to me with a piece of writing, holds it out, says, 'Is this good?' A whole sequence of emergencies goes off in my mind. That's not a question to ask anyone but yourself.”

Writing Mind Whole Asks Pieces Students Emergencies Sequence

Author:William Stafford

“I'll write, because I'll give - You critics means to live; For should I not supply - The cause, the effect would die”

Giving Should Writing Mean Dies Causes Effects Critics Should I

Book:Hesperides; or, Works both human and divine

Source: Hesperides; or, Works both human and divine

“Those who write clearly have readers.”

Writing Reader Writers And Writing Writing By Writers

Author:Albert Camus

“A writer cannot put himself today in service of those who make history; he is at the service of those who suffer it.”

Writing Today Suffering

Book:Nobel Prize Library

Source: Nobel Prize Library

“Writing poetry, we live among the wild beasts, and when we touch a man, the stuff of someone in whom we believed, and he goes to pieces like a rotten pie, you... gather together whatever can be salvaged, while I cup my hands around the live coal of life.”

Men Writing Hands Together Poetry Stuff Pieces Cups Beast Pie Coal Rotten Writing Poetry Wild Beasts

Book:Windows that open inward: images of Chile

Source: Windows that open inward: images of Chile

“Getting ahead in a difficult profession - singing, acting, writing, whatever requires avid faith in yourself. You must be able to sustain yourself against staggering blows and unfair reversals. When I think back to those first couple of years in Rome, those endless rejections, without a glimmer of encouragement from anyone, all those failed screen tests, and yet I never let my desire slide away from me, my belief in myself and what I felt I could achieve.”

“The faults of great authors are generally excellences carried to an excess.”

Writing Faults Excellence Excess Great Author

Book:The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Poetry, Plays, Literary Essays, Lectures, Autobiography and Letters (Classic Illustrated Edition): The Entire Opus of the English poet, literary critic and philosopher, including The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Kubla Khan, Christabel, Lyrical Ballads, Conversation Poems and Biographia Literaria

Source: The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Poetry, Plays, Literary Essays, Lectures, Autobiography and Letters (Classic Illustrated Edition): The Entire Opus of the English poet, literary critic and philosopher, including The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Kubla Khan, Christabel, Lyrical Ballads, Conversation Poems and Biographia Literaria

“The most important thing about writing a book is having book parties.”

Writing Important Book Party Important Things Writing A Book

Author:Art Buchwald

“Just when you think there's nothing to write about, Nixon says, "I am not a crook." Jimmy Carter says, "I have lusted after women in my heart." President Reagan says, "I have just taken a urinalysis test, and I am not on dope."”

Thinking Writing Heart President Taken My Heart Tests Jimmy Carter Dope Crooks President Reagan

Author:Art Buchwald

“For me, poetry is an evasion of the real job of writing prose.”

Writing Real Jobs Poetry Prose Poetry Is Evasion Real Jobs

Author:Sylvia Plath

“At night, never go to bed without knowing what you'll write tomorrow.”

Writing Night Knowing Tomorrow Bed Planning

Author:Ernest Hemingway

“When I am working on a book or a story I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you and it is cool or cold and you come to your work and warm as you write.”

Writing Firsts Book Stories Light Work Morning Cold Warm Every Morning Daily Work

Author:Ernest Hemingway

“When you write - explode - fly apart - disintegrate! Then give time enough to think, cut, rework, and rewrite.”

Thinking Giving Writing Enough Cutting Rework

Author:Ray Bradbury

“I talk to my typewriter and that is what I've been working on for 40 years-how to write for talking.”

Writing Years Talking Typewriters

Author:Alistair Cooke

“The spoken discourse may roll on strongly as the great tidal wave; but, like the wave, it dies at last feebly on the sands. It is heard by few, remembered by still fewer, and fades away, like an echo in the mountains, leaving no token of power. It is the written human speech, that gave power and permanence to human thought.”

Writing Humans May Stills Lasts Dies Written Heard Mountain Speech Leaving Wave Remembered Sand Fewer Fades Echoes Discourse Permanence Fade Away Tokens Human Thought Tidal Waves

Author:Albert Pike

“Writers, especially when they act in a body and with one direction, have great influence on the public mind.”

Writing Mind Body Influence One Direction Authorship Great Influence

Book:The Works of Edmund Burke: With a Memoir

Source: The Works of Edmund Burke: With a Memoir

“I have no interest in the printed word. I would continue to write if there were no writing and no print. I put my words down for a matter of memory. They are more made to be spoken than to be read.”

Ifs Writing Made Matter Interest Memories Print Printed Printed Word

Author:John Steinbeck

“Claude Hopkins.. maintained that nobody with a college education could write an advertisement addressed to the mass millions. That's absolute poppycock.”

Writing Millions College Mass Absolutes Advertising Advertisements College Education Hopkins

Author:David Ogilvy

“It is for this, partly, that I write. How can I know what I think unless I see what I write.”

Thinking Knows Writing Parting

Book:Fear of Flying: 40th Anniversary Edition

Source: Fear of Flying: 40th Anniversary Edition

“The best part of the fiction in many novels is the notice that the characters are purely imaginary.”

Writing Character Fiction Novel Imaginary

Author:Franklin P. Adams

“That's the horrible thing starting out, you get distracted a lot because anything is easier than writing. It's just the same enemy - blank paper.”

Writing Enemy Easier Paper Starting Horrible Blank Distracted Starting Out Horrible Things Blank Paper

Author:Jimmy Breslin

“Write what you love. Love will hold you through the hard times and hold the world during the good times.”

World Writing Hard Hard Times Good Times What You Love

Author:Mark Z. Danielewski

“Write to the mind and heart, and let the ear Glean after what it can.”

Writing Mind Heart Ears Heart And Mind Authorship

Book:Festus: a poem

Source: Festus: a poem

“I've just surfaced from spending several days in a state of rapture: I was reading a book... I felt alive and engaged and positively brilliant, bursting with ideas, brimming with memories of other books I've loved.”

Writing Book Ideas States Reading Felt Memories Alive Spending Brilliant Engaged Positively Rapture Bursting

Author:Nora Ephron

“Writing has power, but its power has no vector. Writers can stir the mind, but they can't direct it. Time changes things, God changes things, the dictators change things, but writers can't change anything.”

Writing Mind Direct Dictator Can't Change Vectors

Author:Isaac Bashevis Singer

“You write about my flower as if I think and see what you think and see of the flower - and I don't.”

Ifs Thinking Writing Flower Critics

Book:Georgia O'Keeffe

Source: Georgia O'Keeffe

“Today there are a lot of novelists who seem to be writing to be reviewed, not read.”

Writing Seems Today Novelists

Author:Pete Hamill

“I decided very early that I wanted to write. But I didn't think of it as a career. I didn't even think of it as a profession... It was the most exciting thing, the most powerful thing, the most wonderful thing to do with my life.”

Thinking Writing Wanted Powerful Careers Wonderful Decided Exciting Profession Things To Do Most Powerful Wonderful Things Exciting Things

Author:Mary Oliver

“The only human value of anything, writing included, is intense vision of the facts.”

Writing Humans Facts Values Vision Intense Human Values

Book:The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams: 1909-1939

Source: The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams: 1909-1939

“But the thing that stands eternally in the way of really good writing is always one: the virtual impossibility of lifting to the imagination those things which lie under the direct scrutiny of the senses, close to the nose. It is this difficulty that sets a value upon all works of art and makes them a necessity. The senses witnessing what is immediately before them in detail see a finality which they cling to in despair, not knowing which way to turn. Thus this so-called natural or scientific array becomes fixed, the walking devil of modern life.”

Source: Kora in Hell: Improvisations

“All education is despotism. It is perhaps impossible for the young to be conducted without introducing in many cases the tyranny implicit in obedience. Go there; do that; read; write; rise; lie down - will perhaps forever be the language addressed to youth by age.”

Writing Age Young Lying Language Cases Forever Impossible Youth Tyranny Obedience Introducing Despotism Implicit

Book:The enquirer. Reflections on education, manners, and literature. In a series of essays

Source: The enquirer. Reflections on education, manners, and literature. In a series of essays

“Writers ever since writing began have had problems, and the main problem narrows down to just one word - life.”

Writing Problem Just One One Word

Book:Conversations with William Styron

Source: Conversations with William Styron

“If all the earth were paper white / And all the sea were ink / 'Twere not enough for me to write / As my poor heart doth think.”

Ifs Thinking Writing Heart Enough Earth White Poor Sea Paper Ink

Author:John Lyly

“Why do you always write poetry? Why do you not write prose? Prose is so much more difficult.”

Writing Poetry Difficult Prose

Author:Walter Pater