Top Writing Quotes Collection - Page 165

Discover a curated collection of Writing quotes. Find inspiration, motivation, and wisdom from the best quotes in this category. Page 165 provides more Writing quotes.

Image of David Mitchell
How vulgar, this hankering after immortality, how vain, how false. Composers are merely scribblers of cave paintings. One writes music because winter is eternal and because, if one didn't, the wolves and blizzards would be at one's throat all the sooner.
- David Mitchell
Collection: Writing
Image of George Sand
We do not precisely enjoy liberty at the Figaro. M. de Latouche, our worthy director (ah! you should know the fellow), is always hanging over us, cutting, pruning, right or wrong, imposing upon us his whims, his aberrations, his fancies, and we have to write as he bids.
- George Sand
Collection: Writing
Image of Rumi
A pen went scribbling along. When it tried to write love, it broke.
- Rumi
Collection: Writing
Image of Simon Pegg
A movie is a creative process from its conception, through its writing, to its execution, to the editing. I think with the best films there is some kind of contribution from one person all the way through that. The best films are made by people who write, direct, and edit, so there's continuity.
- Simon Pegg
Collection: Writing
Image of James A. Michener
You write that first draft really to see how it's going to come out.
- James A. Michener
Collection: Writing
Image of James A. Michener
If I were a young man, I would not hesitate at writing anything to get into print, except pornography.
- James A. Michener
Collection: Writing
Image of James A. Michener
If a young aspirant had a modicum of skill and a busy typewriter she or he would sooner or later get a foothold in one of the magazines and a leaping start on the ladder upward.
- James A. Michener
Collection: Writing
Image of James A. Michener
The rules seem to be these: If you have written a successful novel, everyone invites you to write short stories. If you have written some good short stories, everyone wants you to write a novel. But nobody wants anything until you have already proved yourself by being published somewhere else.
- James A. Michener
Collection: Writing
Image of Mark Twain
When an honest writer discovers an imposition it is his simple duty to strip it bare and hurl it down from its place of honor, no matter who suffers by it; any other course would render him unworthy of the public confidence.
- Mark Twain
Collection: Writing
Image of Zygmunt Bauman
Our bad luck is that our writing is linear, while we think circularly.
- Zygmunt Bauman
Collection: Writing
Image of Joseph B. Wirthlin
You should look ahead now and decide what you want to do with your lives. Fix clearly in your mind what you want to be one year from now, five years, ten years, and beyond. Write your goals and review them regularly. Keep them before you constantly, record your progress, and revise them as circumstances dictate.
- Joseph B. Wirthlin
Collection: Writing
Image of David Foster Wallace
Writing fiction takes me out of time. I sit down and the clock will not exist for me for a few hours. That’s probably as close to immortal as we’ll ever get.
- David Foster Wallace
Collection: Writing
Image of Otto von Bismarck
History is simply a piece of paper covered with print: the main thing is to make history, not to write it.
- Otto von Bismarck
Collection: Writing
Image of Chuck Palahniuk
Don't rush or force the ending. All you have to know is the next scene, or the next few scenes.
- Chuck Palahniuk
Collection: Writing
Image of Linda Howard
Okay, let me get a pen." There were rustling noises. "I can't find one." More noises. "Okay,shoot." "You found a pen?" "No, but I have a can of Cheez Whiz. I'll write your number on the counter with it, then find a pen and copy it." Jaine recited her number and listened to the spewing noise as Shelley Cheez-Whizzed it on her countertop.
- Linda Howard
Collection: Writing
Image of Edward R. Murrow
We're not descended from fearful men - not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular.
- Edward R. Murrow
Collection: Writing
Image of George Saunders
While I'm doing [writing], I don't feel it.I don't think that's a failing. I think it's just a feature. Like, a feature of oneself.
- George Saunders
Collection: Writing
Image of Brandon Sanderson
I Write those words in steel for anything else not set in metal cannot be trusted
- Brandon Sanderson
Collection: Writing
Image of Robert Louis Stevenson
When I suffer in mind, stories are my refuge; I take them like opium; and consider one who writes them as a sort of doctor of the mind.
- Robert Louis Stevenson
Collection: Writing
Image of George Santayana
Never have I enjoyed youth so thoroughly as I have in my old age. In writing Dialogues in Limbo, The Last Puritan, and now all these descriptions of the friends of my youth and the young friends of my middle age, I have drunk the pleasure of life more pure, more joyful than it ever was when mingled with all the hidden anxieties and little annoyances of actual living. Nothing is inherently and invincibly young except spirit. And spirit can enter a human being perhaps better in the quiet of old age and dwell there more undisturbed than in the turmoil of adventure.
- George Santayana
Collection: Writing
Image of Amanda Palmer
I feel like I've gotten to the point in my career and in my life where I can allow myself to write whatever comes into my head and not judge it too harshly.
- Amanda Palmer
Collection: Writing
Image of Richard Wagner
I am writing Parsifal only for my wife - if I had to depend on the German spirit, I should have nothing more to say.
- Richard Wagner
Collection: Writing
Image of Max Weber
Ideas come when we do not expect them, and not when we are brooding and searching at our desks. Yet ideas would certainly not come to mind had we not brooded at our desks and searched for answers with passionate devotion.
- Max Weber
Collection: Writing
Image of David Small
Writing stories, adopting other characters, making up fantastic stories and tales, this is a way of perhaps enhancing who I am. Writing stories takes a commonplace old life and makes it all somehow more interesting. And hopefully I can do that in a way that touches a lot of people in their lives, too.
- David Small
Collection: Writing
Image of Henry David Thoreau
When I read some of the rules for speaking and writing the English language correctly, I think any fool can make a rule, and every fool will mind it.
- Henry David Thoreau
Collection: Writing
Image of Pablo Picasso
I paint the way some people write an autobiography. The paintings, finished or not, are the pages from my diary.
- Pablo Picasso
Collection: Writing
Image of Bertrand Russell
To write tragedy, a man must feel tragedy. To feel tragedy, a man must be aware of the world in which he lives. Not only with his mind, but with his blood and sinews.
- Bertrand Russell
Collection: Writing
Image of Steve Erickson
In the end I write the novels I need to write when I need to write them.
- Steve Erickson
Collection: Writing
Image of Steve Erickson
I'm my own "ideal reader" in the sense that I write novels that I would want to read.
- Steve Erickson
Collection: Writing
Image of Steve Erickson
I write almost purely by instinct. I've never made an outline.
- Steve Erickson
Collection: Writing
Image of Jodi Picoult
When you finally start to write something, do not let yourself stop...even when you are convinced it's the worst garbage ever. This is the biggest caveat for beginning writers. Instead, force yourself to finish what you began, and THEN go back and edit it.
- Jodi Picoult
Collection: Writing
Image of E. B. White
I admire anybody who has the guts to write anything at all.
- E. B. White
Collection: Writing
Image of E. B. White
The best writing is rewriting.
- E. B. White
Collection: Writing
Image of E. B. White
There is nothing harder to estimate than a writer's time, nothing harder to keep track of. There are moments—moments of sustained creation—when his time is fairly valuable; and there are hours and hours when a writer's time isn't worth the paper he is not writing anything on.
- E. B. White
Collection: Writing
Image of Dolly Parton
The guitar is my favorite and the one, I guess, I'm best at. But I play enough of the different instruments to be able to write with them and to, hopefully, to make myself look impressive on stage.
- Dolly Parton
Collection: Writing
Image of Jeanette Winterson
Every word written is a net to catch the word that has escaped.
- Jeanette Winterson
Collection: Writing
Image of Leon Uris
English of course is your major tool, but it is not nearly so important as other aspects of writing for example you have to have some natural ability you can't buy it no one puts it there you're born with it
- Leon Uris
Collection: Writing
Image of Leon Uris
I do not write for an audience
- Leon Uris
Collection: Writing
Image of Bill Murray
If you have a good script, that's what gets you involved. It's harder to write a good screenplay than to find something.
- Bill Murray
Collection: Writing
Image of Banksy
I have a theory that you can make any sentence seem profound by writing the name of a dead philosopher at the end of it.
- Banksy
Collection: Writing
Image of Ruth Benedict
... oh, I long to prove myself by writing! The best seems to die in me when I give it up. It is the self I love--not this efficient, philanthropic self.
- Ruth Benedict
Collection: Writing
Image of Philip Sidney
Fool," said my muse to me. "Look in thy heart and write.
- Philip Sidney
Collection: Writing
Image of Michelle Alexander
I was inspired by what students have done in some schools organizing walkouts protesting the lack of funding and that sort of thing. There are opportunities for students to engage in those types of protests - taking to the streets - but there is also writing poetry, writing music, beginning to express themselves, holding forums, educating each other, the whole range.
- Michelle Alexander
Collection: Writing
Image of Boris Pasternak
The writer is the Faust of modern society, the only surviving individualist in a mass age. To his orthodox contemporaries he seems a semi-madman.
- Boris Pasternak
Collection: Writing
Image of Theodore Roosevelt
Now, it is very necessary that we should not flinch from seeing what is vile and debasing. There is filth on the floor, and it must be scraped up with the muck rake; and there are times and places where this service is the most needed of all the services that can be performed. But the man who never does anything else, who never thinks or speaks or writes, save of his feats with the muck rake, speedily becomes, not a help but one of the most potent forces for evil.
- Theodore Roosevelt
Collection: Writing
Image of Anais Nin
Writers do not live one life, they live two. There is the living and then there is the writing. There is the second tasting, the delayed reaction.
- Anais Nin
Collection: Writing
Image of Georgia O'Keeffe
I get out my work and have a show for myself before I have it publicly. I make up my own mind about it-how good or bad or indifferent it is. After that, the critics can write what they please. I have already settled it for myself so flattery and criticism go down the same drain and I am quite free.
- Georgia O'Keeffe
Collection: Writing
Image of Georgia O'Keeffe
I look at my work and make up my mind about it. After that, neither flattery nor criticism matters to me.
- Georgia O'Keeffe
Collection: Writing
Image of Henry Miller
I have made a silent compact with myself not to change a line of what I write. I am not interested in perfecting my thoughts, nor my actions.
- Henry Miller
Collection: Writing