Top Writing Quotes Collection - Page 155

Discover a curated collection of Writing quotes. Find inspiration, motivation, and wisdom from the best quotes in this category. Page 155 provides more Writing quotes.

Image of Edgar Allan Poe
In the marginalia ... we talk only to ourselves; we therefore talk freshly - boldly - originally - with abandonment - without conceit.
- Edgar Allan Poe
Collection: Writing
Image of Oliver Stone
I'm not an activist. I'm a filmmaker. I'm a dramatist. My strength is to tell a story, to find a way to tell a story that makes it exciting. Our Untold History was a huge challenge. Snowden was no piece of cake, because writing code and breaking code is some of the most boring stuff you've ever seen.
- Oliver Stone
Collection: Writing
Image of Tom Waits
When you're writing‚ you're conjuring. It's a ritual‚ and you need to be brave and respectful and sometimes get out of the way of whatever it is that you're inviting into the room.
- Tom Waits
Collection: Writing
Image of Arthur Miller
Rise early. Write. Disappoint your sons. Read the newspaper. Go to bed early. Success.
- Arthur Miller
Collection: Writing
Image of Neil deGrasse Tyson
I try to write in a way where you care deeply what the next paragraph will be. I hear the rhythm of prose and that, to me, distinguishes great writing from ordinary writing. By the way, I don't even claim that I'm good. I claim that I value it.
- Neil deGrasse Tyson
Collection: Writing
Image of Anne Sexton
Craft is a trick you make up to let you write the poem.
- Anne Sexton
Collection: Writing
Image of Edna O'Brien
Writing is the product of a deeply disturbed psyche, and by no means therapeutic.
- Edna O'Brien
Collection: Writing
Image of Kurt Vonnegut
Your eloquence should be the servant of the ideas in your head. Your rule might be this: If a sentence, no matter how excellent, does not illuminate your subject in some new and useful way, scratch it out.
- Kurt Vonnegut
Collection: Writing
Image of Oscar Wilde
From the point of view of literature Mr. Kipling is a genius who drops his aspirates. From the point of view of life, he is a reporter who knows vulgarity better than any one has ever known it.
- Oscar Wilde
Collection: Writing
Image of John Steinbeck
Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish.
- John Steinbeck
Collection: Writing
Image of May Sarton
My own feeling is that the only possible reason for engaging in the hard labor of writing a novel, is that one is bothered by something one needs to understand, and can come to understand only through the characters in the imagined situation.
- May Sarton
Collection: Writing
Image of May Sarton
It is dangerous it seems to me for a civilization when there is a complete abyss betewen people in general and the artists. Or is it always so? The poets who are most ardently on the people's side write in such a way that the people cannot see rhyme nor reason to their work.
- May Sarton
Collection: Writing
Image of Ayn Rand
The best, most natural dialogue is usually written as if the writer is listening to dictation. You might get stuck on any particular point and have to question yourself; but normally, dialogue writes itself.
- Ayn Rand
Collection: Writing
Image of Ayn Rand
You don't build for the way people live, but for the way they should live. I don't write about people as they are, but as they could be and should be.
- Ayn Rand
Collection: Writing
Image of George Orwell
Good prose should be transparent, like a window pane.
- George Orwell
Collection: Writing
Image of George Orwell
A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom will make it clearer? 4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?
- George Orwell
Collection: Writing
Image of John Updike
Writing doesn't require drive. It's like saying a chicken has to have drive to lay an egg.
- John Updike
Collection: Writing
Image of William Strunk, Jr.
A drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.
- William Strunk, Jr.
Collection: Writing
Image of Mark Twain
Writing is the easiest thing in the world.... Just try it sometime. I sit up with a pipe in my mouth and a board on my knees and I scribble away.
- Mark Twain
Collection: Writing
Image of James Taylor
To be a musician, especially a singer-songwriter - well, you don't do that if you have a thriving social life. You do it because there's an element of alienation in your life.
- James Taylor
Collection: Writing
Image of Seneca the Younger
I have withdrawn not only from men, but from affairs, especially my own affairs; I am working for later generations, writing down some ideas that may be of assistance to them.
- Seneca the Younger
Collection: Writing
Image of Howard Zinn
What most of us must be involved in--whether we teach or write, make films, write films, direct films, play music, act, whatever we do--has to not only make people feel good and inspired and at one with other people around them, but also has to educate a new generation to do this very modest thing: change the world.
- Howard Zinn
Collection: Writing
Image of Judy Blume
Nothing teaches you as much about writing dialogue as listening to it.
- Judy Blume
Collection: Writing
Image of Scott Adams
Few things in life are less efficient than a group of people trying to write a sentence. The advantage of this method is that you end up with something for which you will not be personally blamed.
- Scott Adams
Collection: Writing
Image of Jon Stewart
When my syndicated show got canceled, the next day I still knew how to write jokes. That was a huge revelation. Because at first you think, "I won't have any shelter! What am I gonna do? The sun is hot. Very thirsty."
- Jon Stewart
Collection: Writing
Image of Jon Stewart
I think of myself as a comedian who has the pleasure of writing jokes about things that I actually care about.
- Jon Stewart
Collection: Writing
Image of Josh Billings
Seneca devoted much of his time to writing essays in praise of poverty, and in lending money at usurious rates.
- Josh Billings
Collection: Writing
Image of Karin Slaughter
First and foremost, I want people to have a good read, because I want everything I write to entertain people. There are always different layers to the story, though, so if you want to think about social justice, or sexism or racism or homophobia, or really drill down into why the world is a better place when the police force looks like the people they are policing, then that's there, too.
- Karin Slaughter
Collection: Writing
Image of Karin Slaughter
Like every Southern writer, I thought that I needed to write the next Gone With the Wind.
- Karin Slaughter
Collection: Writing
Image of Joyce Carol Oates
It's hard to say how we compare to other people. We each inhabit our own personalities. I have often felt that I'm a very neutral being and that I have almost no personality. I'm drawn to writing partly because I'm fascinated by the mimetic process.
- Joyce Carol Oates
Collection: Writing
Image of Joyce Carol Oates
"Politics" per se is absent from my writing but there is usually a moral (if ironic) compass.
- Joyce Carol Oates
Collection: Writing
Image of Joyce Carol Oates
It's impossible to read a distinctive stylist like Faulkner, Joyce, Kafka, Mann, Woolf, James - and many more - without wanting to write, however entirely different one's writing will be.
- Joyce Carol Oates
Collection: Writing
Image of Kurt Vonnegut
We have such a young culture that there is an opportunity to contribute wonderful new myths to it, which will be accepted.
- Kurt Vonnegut
Collection: Writing
Image of Kurt Vonnegut
Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
- Kurt Vonnegut
Collection: Writing
Image of Simone de Beauvoir
Writing ... is a profession that can only be learned by writing.
- Simone de Beauvoir
Collection: Writing
Image of Flannery O'Connor
Not-writing is a good deal worse than writing.
- Flannery O'Connor
Collection: Writing
Image of Flannery O'Connor
People without hope not only don't write novels, but what is more to the point, they don't read them.
- Flannery O'Connor
Collection: Writing
Image of Flannery O'Connor
I write any sort of rubbish which will cover the main outlines of the story, then I can begin to see it.
- Flannery O'Connor
Collection: Writing
Image of Flannery O'Connor
I spend three hours a day writing and the rest of my day getting over it.
- Flannery O'Connor
Collection: Writing
Image of Michael Ondaatje
I see myself as someone who's been saved by writing. God knows what I would have been, become or how I would have ended up without it.
- Michael Ondaatje
Collection: Writing
Image of Michael Ondaatje
A blind lover, don't know what I love till I write it out
- Michael Ondaatje
Collection: Writing
Image of Terry Tempest Williams
I write as a witness to what I have seen.
- Terry Tempest Williams
Collection: Writing
Image of Elizabeth Bowen
Often when I write I am trying to make words do the work of line and color. I have the painter's sensitivity to light. Much of my writing is verbal painting.
- Elizabeth Bowen
Collection: Writing
Image of Laini Taylor
Never sit staring at a blank page or screen. If you find yourself stuck, write. Write about the scene you're trying to write. Writing about is easier than writing, and chances are, it will give you your way in.
- Laini Taylor
Collection: Writing
Image of Oscar Wilde
Every great man nowadays has his disciples, and it is usually Judas who writes the biography.
- Oscar Wilde
Collection: Writing
Image of Maggie Stiefvater
whether they'll write the story of my life as a tragedy or an epic fantasy... I was wondering if it was going to be a kiss at the end, or sad music and a sweeping camera shot over the fields I once roamed freely. I'm hoping for the kiss, but expecting the sweeping camera shot.
- Maggie Stiefvater
Collection: Writing
Image of Zadie Smith
Today, writing seems to me like an incredible luxury, almost a perversity, something which hardly exists in the world anymore, where you get to see the fruits of your actions in a daily way.
- Zadie Smith
Collection: Writing
Image of Elie Wiesel
You cannot write in more than one language. Words don't come out as well.
- Elie Wiesel
Collection: Writing
Image of Lance Reddick
I did an Off-Broadway show that was a comedy written by Ann Meara. We were like a family, and we did that show for a year. On Oz, I did feel like the cast members were friends and there was a lot of bonding. That said, there was a lot of testosterone. Once again, it was full of really intense theater actors with this writing that was really intricate and subtle.
- Lance Reddick
Collection: Writing