On Writing Quotes

Threats to freedom of speech, writing and action, though often trivial in isolation, are cumulative in their effect and, unless checked, lead to a general disrespect for the rights of the citizen.

I still love writing in my journal and wearing sparkly dresses and looking at old chandeliers.

I hate writing, I love having written.

May your character not be a writing upon the sand, but an inscription upon the rock!

You become writer by writing. It is a yoga.

Writing graffiti is about the most honest way you can be an artist. It takes no money to do it, you don't need an education to understand it, and there's no admission fee.

Whatever's happening today, remember it is only ONE SCENE in a long movie. Don't treat it like it's the whole story. Keep writing the story.

The only way to learn a new programming language is by writing programs in it.

All profound distraction opens certain doors. You have to allow yourself to be distracted when you are unable to concentrate.

Unfortunately I've been to jail a couple times. Anytime I come in it's difficult to make music, write songs.

I did not write half of what I saw, for I knew I would not be believed

Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.

Just because you're breathing, doesn't mean you're alive.

I write to find out what I am thinking. I write to find out who I am. I write to understand things.

To choose to write is to reject silence.

The conqueror writes history, they came, they conquered and they write. You don't expect the people who came to invade us to tell the truth about us.

I be off the slave ships, building pyramids, writing my own hieroglyphs

Writing is like prostitution. First you do it for love, and then for a few close friends, and then for money.

I am the author of my life. Unfortunately, I am writing in pen and can’t erase my mistakes.

True alchemy lies in this formula: ‘Your memory and your senses are but the nourishment of your creative impulse’.

...I write to keep in contact with our ancestors and to spread truth to people.

That's all we have, finally, the words, and they had better be the right ones.

The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character - that is the goal of true education.

I'm not a writer with a drinking problem, I'm a drinker with a writing problem.

I write only for my shadow which is cast on the wall in front of the light. I must introduce myself to it.

Write about what you know, and what do you know better than your own secrets?

I definitely fall in love quickly, and I'm very in love with being in love. But it is hard for me to write about love.

Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.

Education is not simply to learn to read and write. It's emancipation. It makes you free.

Whenever I’m asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one.

Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.

I want to be clear about this. If you wrote from experience, you'd get maybe one book, maybe three poems. Writers write from empathy.

To gain your own voice, forget about having it heard. Become a saint of your own province and your own consciousness.

To write well and speak well is mere vanity if one does not live well.

Whether I was in my body or out of my body as I wrote it I know not. God knows.

Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.

I don't blame you for writing of me as you have. You had to believe other stories, but then I don't know if any one would believe anything good of me anyway.

To gain your own voice you have to forget about having it heard.

If you want to study writing, read Dickens. That's how to study writing, or Faulkner, or D.H. Lawrence, or John Keats. They can teach you everything you need to know about writing.

To write history is as important as to make history. It is an unchanging truth that if the writer does not remain true to the maker, then it takes on a quality that will confuse humanity.

You don't get rich writing science fiction. If you want to get rich, you start a religion.

Concentrate on what you want to say to yourself and your friends. Follow your inner moonlight; don't hide the madness. You say what you want to say when you don't care who's listening.

I was born to play football, just like Beethoven was born to write music and Michelangelo was born to paint.

I love sushi, but I'm not going to write a column about it.

When you write a two thousand page history of the Second World War, the deportations and the concentration camps will take up five pages, and the gas chambers perhaps 20 lines.

It is ridiculous to set a detective story in New York City. New York City is itself a detective story.

I hope there is something worthy in my writings and not merely the novelty of a black face associated with the power to rhyme that has attracted attention.

Writing has nothing to do with meaning. It has to do with landsurveying and cartography, including the mapping of countries yet to come.

Writing is nature's way of letting you know how sloppy your thinking is.

No one has ever written, painted, sculpted, modeled, built, or invented except literally to get out of hell.