Writing Quotes

If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead, either write something worth reading or do things worth writing.

Benjamin Franklin

In every bit of honest writing in the world, there is a base theme. Try to understand men, if you understand each other you will be kind to each other. Knowing a man well never leads to hate and nearly always leads to love.

John Steinbeck

The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think.

Edwin Schlossberg

God is love, but get it in writing.

Gypsy Rose Lee

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

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_

Not only the studying and writing of history but also the honoring of it both represent affirmations of a certain defiant faith - A desperate, unreasoning faith, if you will - But faith nevertheless in the endurance of this threatened world - Faith in the total essentiality of historical continuity.

George Frost Kennan

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

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 not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.

Robert Heinlein

Never be entirely idle but either be reading, or writing, or praying or meditating or endeavoring something for the public good.

Thomas a Kempis

There are so many opportunities in life, that the loss of two or three capabilities is not necessarily debilitating. A handicap can give you the opportunity to focus more on art, writing, or music.

Jim Davis

When something can be read without effort, great effort has gone into its writing.

Enrique Jardiel Poncela

Major writing is to say what has been seen, so that it need never be said again.

Delmore Schwartz

There is an art of reading, as well as an art of thinking, and an art of writing.

Benjamin Disraeli

Vigorous writing is concise.

William Strunk Jr., "The Elements of Style", 1919

Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.

Gene Fowle

Learn as much by writing as by reading.

Lord Acton

If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead, either write things worth reading, or do things worth writing.

Benjamin Franklin

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

Advice to writers: Sometimes you just have to stop writing. Even before you begin.

Stanislaw J. Lec, "Unkempt Thoughts".

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

In the modern world, in which thousands of people are dying every hour as a consequence of politics, no writing anywhere can begin to be credible unless it is informed by political awareness and principles. Writers who have neither product utopian trash.

John Berge

You know what I say to people when I hear they? re writing an anti - war book?? I say, why don? t you write an anti - Glacier book instead? What he meant, of course, was that there would always be wars, that they were as easy to stop as glaciers. I believe that, too.

Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughter - House 5

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

This is the challenge of writing. You have to be very emotionally engaged in what you? re doing, or it comes out flat. You can? t fake your way through this.

Real Live Preacher, RealLivePreacher. com Weblog, January 29, 2004

Writing only leads to more writing.

Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice journalism what will be grasped at once.

Cyril Connolly

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