Top Writing Quotes Collection - Page 14

Discover a curated collection of Writing quotes. Find inspiration, motivation, and wisdom from the best quotes in this category. Page 14 provides more Writing quotes.

Image of Van Wyck Brooks
The writer is important only by dint of the territory he colonizes.
- Van Wyck Brooks
Collection: Writing
Image of Ludwig van Beethoven
I have never thought of writing for reputation and honor. What I have in my heart must come out; that is the reason why I compose.
- Ludwig van Beethoven
Collection: Writing
Image of J. Robert Oppenheimer
The best way to send information is to wrap it up in a person.
- J. Robert Oppenheimer
Collection: Writing
Image of Gouverneur Morris
The reflection and experience of many years have led me to consider the holy writings not only as the most authentic and instructive in themselves, but as the clue to all other history. They tell us what man is, and they alone tell us why he is what he is: a contradictory creature that seeing and approving of what is good, pursues and performs what is evil. All of private and public life is there displayed. ... From the same pure fountain of wisdom we learn that vice destroys freedom; that arbitrary power is founded on public immorality.
- Gouverneur Morris
Collection: Writing
Image of Susan Sontag
I write - and talk - in order to find out what I think.
- Susan Sontag
Collection: Writing
Image of S.J. Watson
Work. Write. Read. Keep putting words on the page, because that's the only way you'll get better.
- S.J. Watson
Collection: Writing
Image of Richard Hugo
Don't write love poems when you're in love. Write them when you're not in love.
- Richard Hugo
Collection: Writing
Image of Richard Hugo
Don't write with a pen. Ink tends to give the impression the words shouldn't be changed.
- Richard Hugo
Collection: Writing
Image of Richard Hugo
Never write a poem about anything that ought to have a poem written about it.
- Richard Hugo
Collection: Writing
Image of Richard Hugo
I think it's better if you write poems that look like you.
- Richard Hugo
Collection: Writing
Image of Lauren DeStefano
When I am writing anything in general, I just want to tell the story that exists in my head; I don't try to write a parable or make a point.
- Lauren DeStefano
Collection: Writing
Image of Yanni
I tend to avoid writing music about initial reactions to situations, like frustration or anger. I’d rather wait till I go through the problem, and write about the learning that took place.
- Yanni
Collection: Writing
Image of Devendra Banhart
As anthropomorphic and surreal people have said my early writing was, to me it was really stock and almost banal in the sense that it was just description, the poetry of comparing: "Your feet are like A, and your eyes like B."
- Devendra Banhart
Collection: Writing
Image of Steven Galloway
If you don't allow yourself the possibility of writing something very, very bad, it would be hard to write something very good.
- Steven Galloway
Collection: Writing
Image of Ford Madox Ford
The first thing you have to consider when writing a novel is your story, and then your story - and then your story!
- Ford Madox Ford
Collection: Writing
Image of Garth Nix
Even now, she wished she could write a note, push it across the table, and go away to her room. But she was no longer a Second Assistant Librarian of the Great Library of the Clayr. Those days were gone, vanished with everything else that had defined her previous existence and identity.
- Garth Nix
Collection: Writing
Image of Katherine Boo
But if writing about people who are not yourself is illegitimate, then the only legitimate work is autobiography; and as a reader and a citizen, I don’t want to live in that world.
- Katherine Boo
Collection: Writing
Image of Katherine Boo
When I pick a story, I'm very much aware of the larger issues that it's illuminating. But one of the things that I, as a writer, feel strongly about is that nobody is representative. That's just narrative nonsense. People may be part of a larger story or structure or institution, but they're still people. Making them representative loses sight of that. Which is why a lot of writing about low-income people makes them into saints, perfect in their suffering.
- Katherine Boo
Collection: Writing
Image of Kage Baker
I don't think humanity just replays history, but we are the same people our ancestors were, and our descendants are going to face a lot of the same situations we do. It's instructive to imagine how they would react, with different technologies on different worlds. That's why I write science fiction -- even though the term 'science fiction' excites disdain in certain persons.
- Kage Baker
Collection: Writing
Image of Thomas Pynchon
Everybody gets told to write about what they know. The trouble with many of us is that at the earlier stages of life we think we know everything- or to put it more usefully, we are often unaware of the scope and structure of our ignorance.
- Thomas Pynchon
Collection: Writing
Image of Mary Ritter Beard
In brief, we who write are all in the same boat, as if we are survivors of torpedoes, and we hope to reach the shores of thought with strength for more activity.
- Mary Ritter Beard
Collection: Writing
Image of Robin Jones Gunn
If there's one thing I've learned, it's that God is a very creative author, and He writes a different story for every person. No two lives or stories alike.
- Robin Jones Gunn
Collection: Writing
Image of Robin Jones Gunn
Sierra felt full of hope and confidence in God. She knew who she was. And she knew Whose she was. Whatever mysterious plan God had for her life, it would be an interesting one. As Christy had said earlier, God writes a different story for each person. Sierra decided hers might not be a bestseller or even a thriller. It certainly wasn't a romance. But it was turning into a fine mystery. And she could live with that.
- Robin Jones Gunn
Collection: Writing
Image of Silas House
I always tell my writing students that every good piece of writing begins with both a mystery and a love story. And that every single sentence must be a poem. And that economy is the key to all good writing. And that every character has to have a secret.
- Silas House
Collection: Writing
Image of Silas House
Writing is a supernatural thing.
- Silas House
Collection: Writing
Image of Rabih Alameddine
I think in Arabic at times, but when I'm writing it's all in English. And I don't try to make my English sound more Arabic, because it would be phony - I'm imagining Melanie Griffith trying to do a German accent in Shining Through. It just wouldn't work. But the language in my head is a specific kind of English. It's not exactly American, not exactly British. Because everything is filtered through me, through my experience. I'm Lebanese, but not that much. American, but not that much. Gay, but not that much. The only thing I'm sure of, really, is that I'm under 5'7".
- Rabih Alameddine
Collection: Writing
Image of Rabih Alameddine
When I'm writing I don't feel any pressure. It's after I'm done that I start freaking out. But really, when I'm in Lebanon, I don't write much because I'm surrounded by family. I feel immersed, or enmeshed, in too many currents. I love that, but it's not conducive to writing. In San Francisco, nothing interferes with me but my cats.
- Rabih Alameddine
Collection: Writing
Image of Rabih Alameddine
I love a lot of American writers, but I think that for the most part the scope of what's accepted as great American writing is very limited. What we have is good, but it's limited. There's not enough engagement with the world. Our literature's not adventurous enough. The influence of MFA writing tends to make things repetitive. The idea that writing can be taught has changed the whole conversation in the U.S.
- Rabih Alameddine
Collection: Writing
Image of Christina Baker Kline
I never want to feel constrained by writing a novel for a specific audience.
- Christina Baker Kline
Collection: Writing
Image of Christina Baker Kline
I have a lot of empathy for women who fit their writing into the crevices of their too-busy lives, as I once did.
- Christina Baker Kline
Collection: Writing
Image of Marie Howe
When we think we have something to say we are usually wrong. We are fooling ourselves. Trip into discovery. Don't write what you know, discover something new.
- Marie Howe
Collection: Writing
Image of Rex Stout
Measure your minds height by the shadow it casts.
- Rex Stout
Collection: Writing
Image of Richard K. Morgan
I think by definition you need to have lived a little bit to write anything that's humanly true.
- Richard K. Morgan
Collection: Writing
Image of Richard K. Morgan
I've been accused countless times of writing gloomy futures. But to me, the texture of my sci-fi just feels like an extrapolation of current trends.
- Richard K. Morgan
Collection: Writing
Image of James Schuyler
It is always pleasant to learn that someone takes an interest in a work which one enjoyed writing
- James Schuyler
Collection: Writing
Image of James Schuyler
One tends to write beyond what's needed
- James Schuyler
Collection: Writing
Image of Jason Reitman
When I write a film, all I think about is where the thing ends and how to get the audience there.
- Jason Reitman
Collection: Writing
Image of Jason Reitman
The first thing I say when people ask what's the difference [between doing TV and film], is that film has an ending and TV doesn't. When I write a film, all I think about is where the thing ends and how to get the audience there. And in television, it can't end. You need the audience to return the next week. It kind of shifts the drive of the story. But I find that more as a writer than as a director.
- Jason Reitman
Collection: Writing
Image of Annie Proulx
I think it's important to leave spaces in a story for readers to fill in from their own experience.
- Annie Proulx
Collection: Writing
Image of Annie Proulx
If you get the landscape right, the characters will step out of it, and they'll be in the right place.
- Annie Proulx
Collection: Writing
Image of Fergie
I keep a journal. I like myself better when I just pour it out. It's easier sometimes, even if you write on a piece of paper and then tear it up, just to vent it out. Because in the past I have sometimes used interviews as therapy, and then I've regretted it because I'm going, "Wait a second, that is not for the world to know. That's for me to know."
- Fergie
Collection: Writing
Image of Alasdair Gray
...there were certain chapters when I stopped writing, saw the domestic situation I was in and thought, "I don't want to face this world, let's get back to the hellish one I'm imagining.
- Alasdair Gray
Collection: Writing
Image of Ellen Bass
Poetry is the most intimate of all writing. I want to speak first from me to myself and then from me to you.
- Ellen Bass
Collection: Writing
Image of Jonathan Groff
I love acting in the theater,but I'm fascinated with acting on film. If it's a film or a play or whatever, if the writing is good and you really feel passionate about it, you just can't lose. You'll grow from it. Whether it's a success or not is neither here nor there; you're going to grow as an artist from this experience.
- Jonathan Groff
Collection: Writing
Image of Jack Prelutsky
The sound of a word is at least as important as the meaning.
- Jack Prelutsky
Collection: Writing
Image of Jack Prelutsky
The BALLPOINT PENGUINS, black and white, Do little else but write and write. Although they've nothing much to say, They write and write it anyway.
- Jack Prelutsky
Collection: Writing
Image of Caitlín R. Kiernan
The writing of a novel or short story or poem or whatever should elevate the audience, not drag the writer down to some level beneath herself. And she - the author - should fight always to prevent that dragging down, especially when the only possible benefit of allowing it to happen is monetary.
- Caitlín R. Kiernan
Collection: Writing
Image of Ben Parr
The more PR buzzwords you include in your press release, the less likely I am to write you up
- Ben Parr
Collection: Writing
Image of Maria Semple
Anything I write I ask myself: Is it true, is it entertaining?
- Maria Semple
Collection: Writing