Home / Topics / Writing Quotes

Writing Quotes

Browse 36579 quotes about Writing.

Writing Quotes

“Most people who are trying to write kind of sit in their basements and pull it out of their imaginations.”

People Writing Trying Kind Imagination Basements

Author:John Sandford

“I don't really think of time off as writing blocks. I think that's a western notion of demonizing inactivity. When your imagination decides it needs to take a nap. maybe that's what it needs to do.”

Thinking Needs Writing Imagination Western Notion Block Naps Time Off Inactivity

Author:Elliott Smith

“Writing a novel is not merely going on a shopping expedition across the border to an unreal land: it is hours and years spent in the factories, the streets, the cathedrals of the imagination.”

Writing Years Hours Imagination Novel Streets Land Borders Shopping Factories Workplace Unreal Cathedrals Expeditions

Book:An Angel at My Table: The Complete Autobiography

Source: An Angel at My Table: The Complete Autobiography

“I had been a reporter for 15 years when I set out to write my first novel. I knew how to research an article or profile a subject - skills that I assumed would be useless when it came to fiction. It was from my imagination that the characters in my story would emerge.”

Writing Years Firsts Character Stories Would Be Imagination Fiction Novel Subjects Skills Research Useless Articles Reporters My Imagination Profile

Author:Amy Waldman

“Imagination, it turns out, is a great deal like reporting in your own head. Here is a paradox of fiction-writing. You are crafting something from nothing, which means, in one sense, that none of it is true. Yet in the writing, and perhaps in the reading, some of a character's actions or lines are truer than others.”

Writing Mean Character Action Turns Reading Imagination Lines Deals Fiction Paradox Fiction Writing

Author:Amy Waldman

“Everything becomes agitated. Ideas quick-march into motion like battalions of a grand army to its legendary fighting ground, and the battle rages. Memories charge in, bright flags on high; the cavalry of metaphor deploys with a magnificent gallop; the artillery of logic rushes up with clattering wagons and cartridges; on imagination's orders, sharpshooters sight and fire; forms and shapes and characters rear up; the paper is spread with ink - for the nightly labor begins and ends with torrents of this black water, as a battle opens and concludes with black powder.”

“I'm an emotional sort of person in general and I have a vivid imagination, so I feel the whole spectrum of emotion strongly when I write.”

Feels Writing Persons Whole Imagination Emotion Emotional Vivid Spectrum Vivid Imagination

Author:Erin Morgenstern

“It's hard to say when my interest in writing began, or how. My mother read to my sister and me every night, and we always loved playing make-believe games. I had a well-primed imagination. I didn't start thinking about writing as a serious pursuit, a career I could have, until after college.”

Thinking Writing Believe Wells Hard Mother Night Games Interest Imagination Careers College Serious Pursuit My Sister Every Night Make Believe Playing Make Believe

Author:Sara Zarr

“Both reading and writing are experiences--lifelong-- in the course of which we who encounter words used in certain ways are persuaded by them to be brought mind and heart within the presence, the power, of the imagination.”

Way Writing Mind Heart Used Certain Courses Reading Imagination Encounters Heart And Mind Lifelong Reading And Writing

Book:Three papers on fiction

Source: Three papers on fiction

“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

“The worst advice a young writer can get is "Write what you know." Imagination is more important than experience.”

Knows Writing Important Young Imagination Worst Advice Young Writers

Author:Joe Haldeman

“I think because I try to keep things as real as I can, or I try to start from a place of reality, I almost don't have the imagination to write a book that's not set where I am.”

Thinking Writing Trying I Can Book Real Reality Imagination

Author:Maria Semple

“The writing is - I'm free of pain. It's the place where I live; it's where I have control; it's where nobody tells me what to do; it's where my imagination is fecund and I am really at my best. Nothing matters more in the world or in my body or anywhere when I'm writing.”

World Writing Matter Body Pain Imagination My Imagination Nothing Matters

Author:Toni Morrison

“To write is to carve a new path through the terrain of the imagination, or to point out new features on a familiar route. To read is to travel through that terrain with the author as a guide-- a guide one might not always agree with or trust, but who can at least be counted on to take one somewhere.”

Writing Might Imagination Path Agree Guides Familiar Features Routes Terrain New Paths

Book:Wanderlust: A History of Walking

Source: Wanderlust: A History of Walking

“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?”

Ifs Writing Trying Looks Real Shows Individual Speak Strong Imagination Struggle Heard Cry Danger Becoming Ears Claims Faculty Restless Deaf Eloquent Dictation

Book:Jane Eyre

Source: Jane Eyre