Top Writing Quotes Collection - Page 243

Discover a curated collection of Writing quotes. Find inspiration, motivation, and wisdom from the best quotes in this category. Page 243 provides more Writing quotes.

Image of Katherine Mansfield
Ach, Tchekov! Why are you dead? Why can’t I talk to you in a big darkish room at late evening—where the light is green from the waving trees outside? I’d like to write a series of Heavens: that would be one.
- Katherine Mansfield
Collection: Writing
Image of Katherine Mansfield
I am a recluse at present & do nothing but write & read & read & write
- Katherine Mansfield
Collection: Writing
Image of James Russell Lowell
Though old the thought and oft exprest, Tis his at last who says it best.
- James Russell Lowell
Collection: Writing
Image of H. L. Mencken
The prophesying business is like writing fugues; it is fatal to every one save the man of absolute genius.
- H. L. Mencken
Collection: Writing
Image of Catherine Camus
I think [Albert Camus] wanted to write something to explain who he was, and how he was different from the age that had been conferred upon him.
- Catherine Camus
Collection: Writing
Image of Catherine Camus
The First Man is [Albert Camus] posthumous last work. But in fact, in a certain way, it is his first, because in it you find the signs of his commitments, and of the whole way of writing as well. This mixture of austerity and sensuality, the will to speak for those not able to speak for themselves.
- Catherine Camus
Collection: Writing
Image of Catherine Camus
[Albert Camus] wasn't writing under the influence of the Nobel Prize. That was an external thing for the artist in him.
- Catherine Camus
Collection: Writing
Image of Barry Lopez
The writer works on the inside and the critic works on the outside. I don't know what it looks like on the outside, sometimes. It's not that I'm not interested-it's not where I live. I live inside the story.
- Barry Lopez
Collection: Writing
Image of Barry Lopez
If I were to offer any advice to young writers, it would be this: be discriminating and be discerning about the work you set for yourself. That done, be the untutored traveler, the eager reader, the enthusiastic listener. Put what you learn together carefully, and then write thoughtfully, with respect both for the reader and your sources.
- Barry Lopez
Collection: Writing
Image of Antonio Machado
In order to write poetry, you must first invent a poet who will write it.
- Antonio Machado
Collection: Writing
Image of Antonio Machado
The unpublished manuscript is like an uncon-fessed sin that festers in the soul, corrupting and contaminating it.
- Antonio Machado
Collection: Writing
Image of Norman Mailer
The way you write affects what you say.
- Norman Mailer
Collection: Writing
Image of Ian Mcewan
When people ask, "Is there any advice you'd give a young writer?," I say write short stories. They afford lots of failure. Pastiche is a great way to start.
- Ian Mcewan
Collection: Writing
Image of Ian Mcewan
I couldn't think about novels at all. It seemed the only writing that was appropriate to that horrendous event was journalism, reportage. And, in fact, I think the profession rose quite honorably to the task. Novelists require a slower turnover, I mean, in time.
- Ian Mcewan
Collection: Writing
Image of Thomas B. Macaulay
Re: Robert Montgomery's Poems His writing bears the same relation to poetry which a Turkey carpet bears to a picture. There are colours in the Turkey carpet out of which a picture might be made. There are words in Mr. Montgomery's writing which, when disposed in certain orders and combinations,have made, and will make again, good poetry. But, as they now stand, they seem to be put together on principle in such a manner as to give no image of anything in the heavens above, or in the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth.
- Thomas B. Macaulay
Collection: Writing
Image of Cormac McCarthy
The core of literature is the idea of tragedy... You don't really learn much from the good things that happen to you.
- Cormac McCarthy
Collection: Writing
Image of H. L. Mencken
Whenever I write anything that sets up controversy its meaning is distorted almost instantly. Even the editorial writers of newspapers seem to be unable to understand the plainest sentence.
- H. L. Mencken
Collection: Writing
Image of Colum McCann
I write articles, and I do profiles of members of organizations and associations.
- Colum McCann
Collection: Writing
Image of Ryan Adams
I like things that reach a little further and are a little more abstract, but I don't think that's what I do naturally well. How I write naturally is probably what's furthest from me, and the most removed from what I understand.
- Ryan Adams
Collection: Writing
Image of Ryan Adams
It sounds like I'm channeling or something, and I don't really fully understand what it is. I'll get a piece of paper and write down what I think is coming to me. And I'll play it once. Whether it's being recorded or not, I can then usually remember it for a sometimes shocking amount of time.
- Ryan Adams
Collection: Writing
Image of Carolyn Maloney
I write about one of my bills that says pharmacists cannot be doctors. They cannot determine what they will or will not sell, and you find that many pharmacists will not sell birth control. The movement has gone not just against the access of reproductive rights to abortion; the movement has gone to birth control. They're going after birth control.
- Carolyn Maloney
Collection: Writing
Image of Steve McQueen
I have difficulty putting words in peoples' mouths. The best dialogue is very, very thin dialogue; you let people improvise and then basically you record what they've improvised and then write it down.
- Steve McQueen
Collection: Writing
Image of Beth Grant
Tone is a very difficult thing. You can't write tone, I don't think. You can try - you certainly try. I write too, so I know I'm trying desperately to communicate to whoever's going to direct my pieces, the way I see the humor. But it's very difficult.
- Beth Grant
Collection: Writing
Image of Mignon McLaughlin
An old racetrack joke reminds you that your program contains all the winners' names. I stare at my typewriter keys with the same thought.
- Mignon McLaughlin
Collection: Writing
Image of Bethany Cosentino
I don't think lyrics need to be deep - just write whatever comes out of you. You don't need to find intense meaning in everything.
- Bethany Cosentino
Collection: Writing
Image of George R. R. Martin
All fiction, if it's successful, is going to appeal to the emotions. Emotion is really what fiction is all about. That's not to say fiction can't be thoughtful, or present some interesting or provocative ideas to make us think. But if you want to present an intellectual argument, nonfiction is a better tool. You can drive a nail with a shoe but a hammer is a better tool for that. But fiction is about emotional resonance, about making us feel things on a primal and visceral level.
- George R. R. Martin
Collection: Writing
Image of George R. R. Martin
Writing is like sausage making in my view; you'll all be happier in the end if you just eat the final product without knowing what's gone into it.
- George R. R. Martin
Collection: Writing
Image of Richelle Mead
I unfolded the note, and it took me a few seconds to decipher Adrian’s writing. If he did write me a dating proposal, I really hoped he would type it.
- Richelle Mead
Collection: Writing
Image of Marshall McLuhan
In large measure, writing is the spatialization of thought.
- Marshall McLuhan
Collection: Writing
Image of George R. R. Martin
I was a journalism major, and I would take creative writing classes as part of that, but I would also look for opportunities to write stories for some of my other classes. So for my course in Scandinavian history, I asked if I could write historical fiction instead of term papers. Sometimes they’d say yes.
- George R. R. Martin
Collection: Writing
Image of George R. R. Martin
One of the hardest parts of writing is writing from the gut or the heart or something like that rather than intellectually.
- George R. R. Martin
Collection: Writing
Image of George R. R. Martin
I feel satisfaction at the end of the day when I've written a scene that I really like or when I write a good line of dialogue that I read out to my wife or something like that. But there's also days where it's just bloody agony and I go, 'ugh, this is such crap! Why did I think I had any talent?
- George R. R. Martin
Collection: Writing
Image of Steve Martin
Stand-up life is really hard. At one point, I got so paralyzed I could write five screenplays before I could write three jokes for stand-up. Later, I've finally allowed myself to relax quite a bit, to think I can do it because I've done it in the past. The pressure to come up with the material is the same but the anxiety about whether I can do it is gone.
- Steve Martin
Collection: Writing
Image of Steve Martin
I never had a movie that I wanted to do turned down in my whole life. I always write the script first so it speaks for itself.
- Steve Martin
Collection: Writing
Image of Steve Martin
I knew I could only play Cyrano if he were Americanized. I had no intention of writing the script myself. I was afraid of it. You're playing with fire when you tamper with a classic. So I went looking for a writer. But it was such a personal idea, and anyone I would give it to would make it his own. It's hard to ask Neil Simon to write your idea.
- Steve Martin
Collection: Writing
Image of Melissa Gira Grant
I've moved away from writing about and describing actual experiences of sex work, whether mine or anybody else's, because the culture is obsessed with the behavior of sex workers. They want to figure out why they do what they do and who they are. What I'm trying to do is to shift the focus onto the producers of the anti-sex work discourse: the cops, the feminists, the anti-prostitution people. Those are the people whose behavior needs to change.
- Melissa Gira Grant
Collection: Writing
Image of Melissa Gira Grant
It doesn't service anyone any to say, "This is a terrible violation in any circumstance always," because that robs us of our ability to write our own lives. I've had people cheat on me and it's been devastating, and I've had people cheat on me and felt that it showed their true colors.
- Melissa Gira Grant
Collection: Writing
Image of Melissa Gira Grant
Kristin Gwynne has been writing some great stuff about the sexually violent element of "stop-and-frisk." This isn't just "turn out your pockets." This is young people being groped. That form of power - using sexuality for power and control - seems pretty straightforward to me. When are we going to just say that the cops are the enemy here?
- Melissa Gira Grant
Collection: Writing
Image of W. Somerset Maugham
It has been said that good prose should resemble the conversation of a well-bred man.
- W. Somerset Maugham
Collection: Writing
Image of W. Somerset Maugham
We do not write because we want to; we write because we have to.
- W. Somerset Maugham
Collection: Writing
Image of W. Somerset Maugham
It is well to remember that grammar is common speech formulated.
- W. Somerset Maugham
Collection: Writing
Image of Marshall McLuhan
Most clear writing is a sign that there is no exploration going on. Clear prose indicates the absence of thought.
- Marshall McLuhan
Collection: Writing
Image of George R. R. Martin
In order to get inside their skin, I have to identify with them. That includes even the ones who are complete bastards, nasty, twisted, deeply flawed human beings with serious psychological problems. Even them. When I get inside their skin and look out through their eyes, I have to feel a certain - if not sympathy, certainly empathy for them. I have to try to perceive the world as they do, and that creates a certain amount of affection.
- George R. R. Martin
Collection: Writing
Image of George R. R. Martin
I do play all the characters, when I write them, one after another. If they actually had to film me, the only one I could play would be Samwell Tarly or Hot Pie.
- George R. R. Martin
Collection: Writing
Image of Norman Mailer
I don't read other writers because I'm writing all the time. It's too disturbing to read a writer with a good style when you're in the middle of putting your work together.
- Norman Mailer
Collection: Writing
Image of Karl Marx
Go on, get out - last words are for fools who haven't said enough. To his housekeeper, who urged him to tell her his last words so she could write them down for posterity.
- Karl Marx
Collection: Writing
Image of Garth Greenwell
It does seem like between the groundbreaking writing of Edmund White's generation and the work of younger gay writers in their twenties and thirties there is a kind of gap.
- Garth Greenwell
Collection: Writing
Image of Garth Greenwell
I am a gay writer, absolutely. And in no way does that fact limit the reach or importance of what I write.
- Garth Greenwell
Collection: Writing
Image of Margaret Mead
Wonder is very important, because if we never wondered, we would never get to the point of asking questions. Yet wonder may lead people to write poetry or to paint pictures or to pray, as well as to ask the kinds of questions about the world and themselves that can be answered by science.
- Margaret Mead
Collection: Writing