Quotessence
Home / Topics / Writing Quotes

Writing Quotes

Browse 36579 quotes about Writing.

Related topics

IfsThinkingPeopleBookKnowsWaySongWantStoriesTryingWorldFeelsNovelKindI CanFirstsYearsWellsCharacterIdeasNeedsMenShouldSometimesReadingWrittenDifferentLongLittlesGivingMeanMindArtFictionWantedReaderPlayPersonsHardImportantTwoStillsDoneRealLiteratureStuffEnoughEndsBelieveProcessSaidMayHas BeensMy OwnLooksAbleDoeFeelingsSeemsPagesMadeMightUseHappensChildrenLanguageMatterReasonPaperFilmWould BeShowsCreativeWholeHeartMomentsHelpingLettersJobsHumansRememberFormInterestingArtistTogetherUsedKidsNextPoetSongwritingPiecesThreeFunDifficultSchoolSelfHandsVoiceHoursLinesmore

Writing Quotes

“Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts the book of their deeds, the book of their words, and the book of their art. Not one of these books can be understood unless we read the two others; but of the three, the only quite trustworthy one is the last. The acts of a nation may be triumphant by its good fortune; and its words mighty by the genius of a few of its children: but its art, only by the general gifts and common sympathies of the race.”

WritingMayChildrenArtTwoBookLastsThreeNationsCommonRaceGeniusUnderstoodFortuneDeedsAutobiographyGood FortuneTrustworthyManuscriptsTriumphantGreat Nations
Author:John Ruskin
Create image

“I've always felt that my relationship to the United States is analogous to a marriage. I love this country. I hate it. I get angry at it. I feel close to it. I'm charmed by it. I'm repelled by it. And it's a marriage that's gone on for let's say at least 50 years of my writing life, and in the course of that, what's happened? It's gotten worse. It's not what it used to be.”

FeelsWritingYearsCountryStatesAmericaUsedHateCoursesFeltUnitedUnited StatesGoneHappenedI HateAngryUsed To BeWriting LifeCharmed
Author:Norman Mailer
Create image

“I compelled myself all through to write an exercise in verse, in a different form, every day of the year. I turned out my page every day, of some sort - I mean I didn't give a damn about the meaning, I just wanted to master the form - all the way from free verse, Walt Whitman, to the most elaborate of villanelles and ballad forms. Very good training. I've always told everybody who has ever come to me that I thought that was the first thing to do.”

WayGivingWritingYearsFirstsMeanDifferentWantedFormMastersExercisePagesTrainingVery GoodDamnThings To DoVersesCompelledWaltBalladsDays Of The YearFree Verse
Author:Conrad Aiken
Create image

“It is precisely the sort of thing I am always trying to do in my writing -- to present my unhappy reader with a wide-ranged chaos -- of actions and reactions, thoughts, memories and feelings -- in the vain hope that at the end he will see that the whole thing represents only one moment, one feeling, one person. A raging, trumpeting jungle of associations, and then I announce at the end of it, with a gesture of despair, "This is I!”

WritingTryingPersonsEndsWholeMomentsFeelingsActionMemoriesReaderDespairChaosWideRageUnhappyReactionsVainAssociationGesturesJungleAlways TryingAction And Reaction
Book:Blue Voyage: A Novel
Create image

“Is not the real experience of each individual very limited? And, if a writer dwells upon that solely or principally, is he not in danger of repeating himself, and also of becoming an egotist? Then, too, imagination is a strong, restless faculty, which claims to be heard and exercised: are we to be quite deaf to her cry, and insensate to her struggles? When she shows us bright pictures, are we never to look at them, and try to reproduce them? And when she is eloquent, and speaks rapidly and urgently in our ear, are we not to write to her dictation?”

IfsWritingTryingLooksRealShowsIndividualSpeakStrongImaginationStruggleHeardCryDangerBecomingEarsClaimsFacultyRestlessDeafEloquentDictation
Book:Jane Eyre
Create image

“An understandable hunger for potential clients tempts many [career counseling therapists] to overpromise, like creative writing teachers who, out of greed or sentimentality, sometimes imply that all of their students could one day produce worthwhile literature, rather than frankly acknowledging the troubling truth, anathema to a democratic society, that the great writer, like the contented worker, remains an erratic and anomalous event, immune to the methods of factory farming.”

WritingSometimesLiteratureCareersCreativeTeacherEventsStudentsProduceOne DayMethodRemainsDemocraticWorkersGreedHungerFactoriesWorthwhileClientsCreative WritingFarmingImmuneTherapistsGreat WritersSentimentalityCounselingDemocratic SocietyFactory FarmingErraticAnathema
Author:Alain de Botton
Create image

“It's so easy to get into the same routine. A novel every two years; perhaps, improving technique. But I'm not interested in that. I'm interested in doing something fundamentally important--and therefore, it needs time. And what I've been doing, really, is avoiding this pressure to get into the habit of one novel a year. This is what is expected of novelists. And I have never been really too much concerned with doing what is expected of novelists, or writers, or artists. I want to do what I believe is important.”

WantNeedsWritingYearsBelieveTwoImportantArtistI BelieveEasyNovelToo MuchHabitConcernedPressureExpectedTechniqueNovelistsTwo YearsRoutineNot InterestedImprovingAvoidingEasy To GetTime Of Need
Author:Chinua Achebe
Create image

“My books have done extremely well, I know. But I don't honestly feel much different from when I began to write. I still think we have a long way to go. I suppose my name means more in Nigeria today than it did five years ago. But I feel the job that literature should do in our community has not even started. It's not yet part of the life of the nation. We are still at the beginning. It's a big beginning, because now we are catching the next generation in the schools. When I was their age, I had nothing to read that had any relevance to my own environment.”

ThinkingKnowsWayFeelsShouldWritingYearsWellsMeanLongStillsBookDifferentDoneBigsAgeTodaySchoolJobsNextLiteratureNamesNationsCommunityMy OwnEnvironmentFiveGenerationsYears AgoHonestlyFive YearsLong WayNext GenerationCatchingRelevanceOur CommunityNigeriaLong Way To Go
Book:Conversations with Chinua Achebe
Create image

“To the question of writing at all we have sometimes been counselled to forget it, or rather the writing of books. What is required, we are told, is plays and films. Books are out of date! The book is dead, long live television! One question which is not even raised let alone considered is: Who will write the drama and film scripts when the generation that can read and write has been used up?”

WritingLongHas BeensBookSometimesPlayFilmUsedForgetGenerationsTelevisionDramaRaisedScriptsForget ItLive Television
Book:Hopes and impediments: selected essays
Create image

“What really worries me is that those who are in positions of power are not really affected by what we are writing. In the moral dialogue you want to start, you really want to involve the leaders. People ask me: "Why were you so bold as to publish A Man of the People? How did you think the Government was going to take it? You didn't know there was going to be a coup?" I said rather flippantly that nobody was going to read it anyway, so I wasn't likely to be fired from my official position. It's a distressing thought that we cannot engage our leaders in the kind of moral debate we need.”

PeopleThinkingKnowsMenWantNeedsWritingKindSaidGovernmentAsksLeaderMoralWorryPositionDebateDialogueAsk MeOfficialsAffectedPublishDistressingCoupsPosition Of Power
Book:Conversations with Chinua Achebe
Create image

“When I go beyond a certain range it's outside of my direct horizon therefore I've got to rely on the writings and personal communications given to me by other people that I know.... I've got to try to piece together some tentative information picture of what the whole thing is like, but I'm aware that it becomes more and more speculative as it becomes more and more second, third, fourth hand. And this applies to absolutely everyone.”

PeopleKnowsWritingTryingWholeHandsTogetherCertainGivenPiecesInformationCommunicationDirectThirdsRangeRelyHorizonFourth
Author:R. D. Laing
Create image

“Any satirist writing a futuristic novel who had imagined a President Reagan during the Eisenhower years would have been accused of perpetrating a piece of crude, contemptible, adolescent, anti-American wickedness, when, in fact, he would have succeeded, as prophetic sentry, where Orwell failed.”

WritingYearsHas BeensFactsPresidentNovelPiecesWickednessAccusedCrudePropheticFuturisticSatiristAnti-americanPresident Reagan
Book:Conversations with Philip Roth
Create image

“When you decide 'to be a writer,' you don't have the faintest idea of what the work is like. When you begin, you write spontaneously out of your limited experience of both the unwritten world and the written world. You're full of naïve exuberance. 'I am a writer!' Rather like the excitement of 'I have a lover!' But working at it nearly every day for fifty years – whether it is being the writer or being the lover – turns out to be an extremely taxing job and hardly the pleasantest of human activities.”

WorldWritingYearsHumansIdeasJobsTurnsWrittenLoversActivityExcitementFiftyHuman ActivityUnwrittenExuberance
Author:Philip Roth
Create image

“Pseudo-modernists pursue individual style because they know they cannot make a name without it; but if they had lived in the eighteenth century their sole object would have been to write correctly, to conform to the manner of the period. In practice, their conforming individualism means an imitation, studiously concealed, of the eccentricities of poems which really are individual.”

IfsKnowsWritingMeanHas BeensNamesIndividualPracticeCenturyStyleObjectsPeriodsPursueIndividualismSoleImitationConformConcealedEccentricityPseudoIndividual Style
Author:Laura Riding
Create image

“The anthology meets with two different kinds of reactions in living poets. They will either write toward the anthology or away from it. Anti-anthology poets often overreach themselves, inflicting protective distortions on their work - as parents in old Central Europe often deliberately maimed their sons to save them from compulsory military service.”

WritingKindTwoDifferentParentMilitarySonPoetEuropeReactionsDifferent KindsProtectiveDistortionAnthologyCompulsoryMilitary Service
Author:Laura Riding
Create image

“To refer even in passing to unpublished or struggling authors and their problems is to put oneself at some risk, so I will say here and now that any unsolicited manuscripts or typescripts sent to me will be destroyed unread. You must make your way yourself. Why you should be so set on the nearly always disappointing profession is a puzzling question.”

WayShouldWritingProblemStruggleRiskOneselfProfessionPassingPassingsDestroyedHere And NowDisappointingManuscriptsPuzzling
Book:The Amis collection: selected non-fiction, 1954-1990
Create image