Home / Topics / Writing Quotes

Writing Quotes

Browse 36579 quotes about Writing.

Writing Quotes

“People like ourselves may see nothing wondrous in writing, but our anthropologists know how strange and magical it appears to a purely oral people - a conversation with no one and yet with everyone. What could be stranger than the silence one encounters when addressing a question to a text? What could be more metaphysically puzzling than addressing an unseen audience, as every writer of books must do? And correcting oneself because one knows that an unknown reader will disapprove or misunderstand?”

Source: Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

“To write is to make oneself the echo of what cannot cease speaking.”

Writing Oneself Cease Echoes Decisiveness

Author:Arnold Bennett

“It is a very good exercise, at least from a historian's point of view, to imagine oneself a devout pagan while reading various Christian writings.”

Writing Christian Reading Views Imagine Exercise Very Good Oneself Various Point Of View Historian Pagan Good Exercise

Author:Ramsay MacMullen

“I have nothing but myself to write about, no facts, no theories, no opinions, no adventures, no sentiments, nothing but my own poor barren individualism, of considerable interest to me, but I do not know why I should presume it will be so to you. Egotism is not tiresome, or it ought not to be, if one is sincere about oneself; but it is so hard to be sincere. Well, never mind, I mean to be, and you know me well enough to see through me when I am humbugging.”

Ifs Knows Should Writing Mind Wells Mean Hard Enough Facts Interest My Own Poor Opinion Adventure Theory Ought Oneself Sincere Sentiments Individualism Know Me Egotism Barren Tiresome

Book:The Nemesis of Faith

Source: The Nemesis of Faith

“In the nineteenth century one had to give all sorts of guarantees and lead an exemplary life in order to cleanse oneself in the eyes of the bourgeois of the sin of writing, for literature is, in essence, heresy. The situation has not changed except that it is now the Communists, that is, the qualified representatives of the proletariat, who as a matter of principle regard the writer as suspect.”

“To refer even in passing to unpublished or struggling authors and their problems is to put oneself at some risk, so I will say here and now that any unsolicited manuscripts or typescripts sent to me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.”

Way Should Writing Problem Struggle Risk Oneself Profession Passing Passings Destroyed Here And Now Disappointing Manuscripts Puzzling

Book:The Amis collection: selected non-fiction, 1954-1990

Source: The Amis collection: selected non-fiction, 1954-1990