Top Writing Quotes Collection - Page 32

Discover a curated collection of Writing quotes. Find inspiration, motivation, and wisdom from the best quotes in this category. Page 32 provides more Writing quotes.

Image of Tammy Wynette
The sad part about happy endings is there's nothing to write about.
- Tammy Wynette
Collection: Writing
Image of Robert Pinsky
My devils and angels, fears and hopes, insights and stupidities, loves and loathings, are what they are. I don't edit them out so much as try to make them interesting - whether I am talking to you, or writing a poem, or joking with my kids, or speaking on television.
- Robert Pinsky
Collection: Writing
Image of Marita Golden
Novelists have to love humanity to write anything worthwhile. Poets have to love themselves.
- Marita Golden
Collection: Writing
Image of Angus Wilson
The novelist must be his own most harsh critic and also his own most loving admirer and about both he must say nothing.
- Angus Wilson
Collection: Writing
Image of Angus Wilson
The impulse to write a novel comes from a momentary unified vision of life.
- Angus Wilson
Collection: Writing
Image of A. V. Dicey
Freedom of discussion is in England little else than the right to write or say anything which a jury of twelve shopkeepers think it expedient should be said or written.
- A. V. Dicey
Collection: Writing
Image of Ihab Hassan
The (post) structuralist temper requires too great a depersonalization of the writing/speaking subject. Writing becomes plagiarism; speaking becomes quoting. Meanwhile, we do write, we do speak.
- Ihab Hassan
Collection: Writing
Image of Jerry Pournelle
I am sure it has been done with less, but you should be prepared to write and throw away a million words of finished material. By finished, I mean completed, done, ready to submit, and written as well as you know how at the time you wrote it. You may be ashamed of it later, but that's another story.
- Jerry Pournelle
Collection: Writing
Image of John Mason Brown
It is in the hard, hard rockpile labor of seeking to win, hold, or deserve a reader's interest that the pleasant agony of writing again comes in.
- John Mason Brown
Collection: Writing
Image of John Mason Brown
The purpose of writing is to hold a mirror to nature, but too much today is written from small mirrors in vanity cases.
- John Mason Brown
Collection: Writing
Image of George Fetherling
Prague is not, strictly speaking, travel writing but it is, among other things, an excellent example of what travel writing is becoming, if indeed it hasn't already done so. . . . People are no longer so easily satisfied by the mere travel impressions of some outsider much like themselves. Instead they gravitate towards writers who actually have lived not simply in, but inside, a location for an extended period, as one lives inside one's clothes.
- George Fetherling
Collection: Writing
Image of Gian-Carlo Rota
Every field has its taboos. In algebraic geometry the taboos are (1) writing a draft that can be followed by anyone but two or three of one's closest friends, (2) claiming that a result has applications, (3) mentioning the word 'combinatorial,' and (4) claiming that algebraic geometry existed before Grothendieck (only some handwaving references to 'the Italians' are allowed provided they are not supported by specific references).
- Gian-Carlo Rota
Collection: Writing
Image of Eric S. Raymond
Good programmers know what to write. Great ones know what to rewrite (and reuse)
- Eric S. Raymond
Collection: Writing
Image of Mark Gonzales
I can write anything and just put it in a zine, and then it's out there. It is like blogging but on paper. It is what I started to do before the computers were all popular.
- Mark Gonzales
Collection: Writing
Image of Ziauddin Yousafzai
Education is not simply to learn to read and write. It's emancipation. It makes you free.
- Ziauddin Yousafzai
Collection: Writing
Image of Michael Howard
History is what we read, write and think about the past.
- Michael Howard
Collection: Writing
Image of Keith Devlin
A PhD in Mathematics is three years of guessing it wrong, plus one week of getting it right and writing a dissertation.
- Keith Devlin
Collection: Writing
Image of John Wilkins
Obscurity in writing is commonly an argument of darkness in the mind. The greatest learning is to be seen in the greatest plainness.
- John Wilkins
Collection: Writing
Image of Carol Tavris
History is written by the victors, but it's victims who write the memoirs.
- Carol Tavris
Collection: Writing
Image of Phil Dusenberry
I have always believed that writing advertisements is the second most profitable form of writing. The first, of course, is ransom notes.
- Phil Dusenberry
Collection: Writing
Image of David Talbot
I actually do think the history is so epic that it actually kind of writes itself.
- David Talbot
Collection: Writing
Image of William Zinsser
Writing is thinking on paper.
- William Zinsser
Collection: Writing
Image of William Zinsser
Writing is hard work. A clear sentence is no accident. Very few sentences come out right the first time, or even the third time. Remember this in moments of despair. If you find that writing is hard, it's because it is hard. It's one of the hardest things that people do
- William Zinsser
Collection: Writing
Image of William Zinsser
Writing is not a special language that belongs to a few sensitive souls who have a 'gift for words'. Writing is the logical arrangement of thought. Anyone who thinks clearly should be able to write clearly---about any subject at all.
- William Zinsser
Collection: Writing
Image of William Zinsser
The secret of good writing is to strip every sentence to its cleanest components.
- William Zinsser
Collection: Writing
Image of William Zinsser
Clutter is the disease of American writing. We are a society strangling in unnecessary words, circular constructions, pompous frills, and meaningless jargon.
- William Zinsser
Collection: Writing
Image of William Zinsser
Writing organizes and clarifies our thoughts. Writing is how we think our way into a subject and make it our own. Writing enables us to find out what we know-and what we don't know-about whatever we're trying to learn.
- William Zinsser
Collection: Writing
Image of William Zinsser
To defend what you've written is a sign that you are alive.
- William Zinsser
Collection: Writing
Image of William Zinsser
If writing seems hard, it's because it is hard. It's one of the hardest things people do.
- William Zinsser
Collection: Writing
Image of William Zinsser
Writing is linear and sequential; Sentence B must follow Sentence A, and Sentence C must follow Sentence B, and eventually you get to Sentence Z. The hard part of writing isn't the writing; it's the thinking. You can solve most of your writing problems if you stop after every sentence and ask: What does the reader need to know next?
- William Zinsser
Collection: Writing
Image of William Zinsser
Writing improves in direct ratio to the things we can keep out of it that shouldn't be there.
- William Zinsser
Collection: Writing
Image of William Zinsser
If you write for yourself, you'll reach all the people you want to write for.
- William Zinsser
Collection: Writing
Image of Sergei Prokofiev
It seemed to me that had Haydn lived to our day he would have retained his own style while accepting something of the new at the same time. That was the kind of symphony I wanted to write: a symphony in the classical style. And when I saw that my idea was beginning to work, I called it the Classical Symphony.
- Sergei Prokofiev
Collection: Writing
Image of Wil Haygood
Writing is physical work. It's sweaty work. You just can't will yourself to become a good writer. You really have to work at it.
- Wil Haygood
Collection: Writing
Image of Ned Rorem
To start writing about your life is, from one standpoint, to stop living it. You must avoid adventures today so as to make time for registering those of yesterday.
- Ned Rorem
Collection: Writing
Image of Patrick Dennis
Writing isn't hard - no harder than ditch digging.
- Patrick Dennis
Collection: Writing
Image of Michel Butor
Every word written is a victory against death.
- Michel Butor
Collection: Writing
Image of Danny Wallace
I think if you've got a good idea it will stand out in one of the different mediums. For example, something might happen to me today and it could be something to talk about tomorrow on the radio, or I can write about it, or perhaps it will be best suited to telly.
- Danny Wallace
Collection: Writing
Image of Danny Wallace
The people around you are you. They share your history. They can even write it with you. And when you lose one, there's no doubt you lose some of yourself, however they're lost.
- Danny Wallace
Collection: Writing
Image of Joan Wallach Scott
There's actually a wonderful quote from Stanley Fish, who is sometimes very polemical and with whom I don't always agree. He writes, "Freedom of speech is not an academic value. Accuracy of speech is an academic value; completeness of speech is an academic value; relevance of speech is an academic value. Each of these is directly related to the goal of academic inquiry: getting a matter of fact right."
- Joan Wallach Scott
Collection: Writing
Image of Nelson Algren
You don't write a novel out of sheer pity any more than you blow a safe out of a vague longing to be rich. A certain ruthlessness and a sense of alienation from society is as essential to creative writing as it is to armed robbery.
- Nelson Algren
Collection: Writing
Image of Nelson Algren
Any writer who knows what he's doing isn't doing very much.
- Nelson Algren
Collection: Writing
Image of Nelson Algren
I'm not against sentimentality. I think you need it. I mean, I don't think you get a true picture of people without it in writing... It's a kind of poetry, it's an emotional poetry, and, to bring it back to the literary scene, I don't think anything is true that doesn't have it, that doesn't have poetry in it.
- Nelson Algren
Collection: Writing
Image of Nelson Algren
I don't recommend being a bachelor, but it helps if you want to write.
- Nelson Algren
Collection: Writing
Image of Violette Leduc
To write is to inform against others.
- Violette Leduc
Collection: Writing
Image of Klemens von Metternich
The men who make history have not time to write it.
- Klemens von Metternich
Collection: Writing
Image of Cillian Murphy
If you behave like a celebrity, then people will treat you like a celebrity, and if you don't, they won't. There's not much to write about me in the tabloids.
- Cillian Murphy
Collection: Writing
Image of Joel Spolsky
There's a subtle reason that programmers always want to throw away the code and start over. The reason is that they think the old code is a mess. [...] The reason that they think the old code is a mess is because of a cardinal, fundamental law of programming: It's harder to read code than to write it.
- Joel Spolsky
Collection: Writing
Image of Joel Spolsky
It's harder to read code than to write it.
- Joel Spolsky
Collection: Writing