Writing Quotes

There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.
W. Somerset Maugham
Never be entirely idle but either be reading, or writing, or praying or meditating or endeavoring something for the public good.
Thomas a Kempis
Writing is hard work and bad for the health.
E. B. White
When something can be read without effort, great effort has gone into its writing.
Enrique Jardiel Poncela
Good writing takes more than just time; it wants your best moments and the best of you.
Real Live Preacher, RealLivePreacher. com weblog, 10 - 09 - 04
Thomas a kempis - never be entirely idle; but either be reading, or...
If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead, either write things worth reading, or do things worth writing.
Benjamin Franklin
Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins commited in previous lives.
James Joyce
Cyril connolly - always be nice to those younger than you, because...
To attract good fortune, spend a new coin on an old friend, share an old pleasure with a new friend, and lift up the heart of a true friend by writing his name on the wings of a dragon.
Chinese Prove
Learn as much by writing as by reading.
Lord Acton
No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.
Booker T. Washington
Where there is much desire to learn, there of necessity will be much arguing, much writing, many opinions; for opinions in good men is but knowledge in the making.
John Milton
True glory consists in doing what deserves to be written; in writing what deserves to be read; and in so living as to make the world happier for our living in it.
Pliny The Elde
Then anyone who leaves behind him a written manual, and likewise anyone who receives it, in the belief that such writing will be clear and certain, must be exceedingly simple - Minded...
Plato, _Phaedrus_
God is love, but get it in writing.
Gypsy Rose Lee
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
Horace - of writing well the source and fountainhead is...
In the next year or so, my signature will appear on 60 billion of United States currency. More important to me, however, is the signature that appears on my life - The strong, proud, assertive handwriting of a loving father and mother.
Katherine D. Ortega
Writing is a solitary occupation. Family, friends, and society are the natural enemies of the writer. He must be alone, uninterrupted, and slightly savage if he is to sustain and complete an undertaking.
Jessamyn West
Fiction writing is great. You can make up almost anything.
Ivana Trump
Writing, I think, is not apart from living. Writing is a kind of double living. The writer experiences everything twice. Once in reality and once in the mirror which waits always before or behind.
Catherine Drinker Bowen
It seems to me that those songs that have been any good, I have nothing much to do with the writing of them. The words have just crawled down my sleeve and come out on the page.
Joan Baez
No nation ancient or modern ever lost the liberty of freely speaking, writing, or publishing their sentiments, but forthwith lost their liberty in general and became slaves.
John Peter Zenge
Advice to writers: Sometimes you just have to stop writing. Even before you begin.
Stanislaw J. Lec, "Unkempt Thoughts".
Only amateurs say that they write for their own amusement. Writing is not an amusing occupation. It is a combination of ditch - Digging, mountain - Climbing, treadmill and childbirth... But amusing Never.
Edna Ferbe
Where there is much desire to learn, there of necessity will be much arguing, much writing, many opinions for opinions in good men is but knowledge in the making.
John Milton
Vigorous writing is concise.
William Strunk Jr., "The Elements of Style", 1919
The secret of good writing is to say an old thing in a new way or to say a new thing in an old way.
Richard Harding Davis
Bureaucrats write memoranda both because they appear to be busy when they are writing and because the memos, once written, immediately become proof that they were busy.
Charles Peters
I learned that you should feel when writing, not like Lord Byron on a mountain top, but like child stringing beads in kindergarten - - Happy, absorbed and quietly putting one bead on after another.
Brenda Ueland
The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think.
Edwin Schlossberg
Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man.
Sir Francis Bacon
Real seriousness in regard to writing is one of two absolute necessities. The other, unfortunately, is talent.
Ernest Hemingway
If you would not be forgotten, as soon as you are rotten, either write things worth reading or do things worth the writing.
Benjamin Franklin
True glory consists in doing what deserves to be written in writing what deserves to be read and in so living as to make the world happier for our living in it.
Pliny the Elde
Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself.
Truman Capote
When writing a novel a writer should create living people people not characters. A character is a caricature.
Ernest Hemingway
Arranging a bowl of flowers in the morning can give a sense of quiet in a crowded day - Like writing a poem, or saying a prayer.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
There is an art of reading, as well as an art of thinking, and an art of writing.
Benjamin Disraeli