Writing Quotes

Part of the appeal of the fantastic is taking ridiculous ideas very seriously and pretending they're not absurd.

Writer's block? I've never heard of a plumber complain about plumber's block.

I have a great many opinions about writing, but I'm afraid that all of them are unprintable

Write beautifully what people don’t want to hear.

Poetry is perfect verbs hunting for elusive nouns.

To be able to talk to your heart’s content about a book you like with someone who feels the same way about it is one of the greatest joys that life can offer.

Literature can teach us how to live before we live, and how to die before we die. I believe that writing is practice for death, and for every (other) transformation human beings encounter.

The mystery of writing advertisements consists mainly in saying in a few plain words exactly what it is desired to say, precisely as it would be written in a letter or told to an acquaintance.

History is written by the victors, but it's victims who write the memoirs.

I decided to write short stories because they got rejected quicker.

To simplify complications is the first essential of success.

I can see a version of my life where it all becomes meaningless. On a good day, writing seems noble. Other times, it's narcissistic and pointless.

The only time I know that something is true is the moment I discover it in the act of writing.

Writing is not a profession, occupation or job; it is not a way of life: it is a comprehensive response to life.

I firmly believe every book was meant to be written.

The essence of drama is that man cannot walk away from the consequences of his own deeds.

One of the great moments of my life was when I could write musician on my passport.

Writing has always been my go-to form of expression. Whenever I was going through something as a kid, I would write it down and I would turn it into a poem.

For myself, I always write about Dublin, because if I can get to the heart of Dublin I can get to the heart of all the cities of the world. In the particular is contained the universal.

For your born writer, nothing is so healing as the realization that he has come upon the right word.

In writing a series of stories about the same characters, plan the whole series in advance in some detail, to avoid contradictions and inconsistencies.

The mere habit of writing, of constantly keeping at it, of never giving up, ultimately teaches you how to write.

Despite my solitary life, I have found infinite joy in books and writing, and am by far too much interested in the affairs of the world to quit the scene before Nature shall claim me.

Write to exhaustion so that you can no longer manage to avoid writing the truth.

If you don't know it, don't write it.

There is no idea so stupid or hackneyed that a sufficiently-talented writer can't get a good story out of it.

Becoming a writer means being creative enough to find the time and the place in your life for writing.

Those in power write the history while those who suffer write the songs.

Work every day. No matter what has happened the day or night before, get up and bite on the nail.

Whether or not you write well, write bravely.

Writing is not the lottery. New writers have to be realistic about what it takes to get published. But there is one similarity to the lottery: You have to play to win.

Sometimes I feel that the people I'm writing are more real to me than the people around me. When you take that imaginative leap, you're living so much in that world.

No author dislikes to be edited as much as he dislikes not to be published.

There are only three things in the world, one is to read poetry, another is to write poetry, and the best of all is to live poetry.

I read hungrily and delightedly, and have realized since that you can’t write unless you read.

Every paragraph should accomplish two goals: advance the story, and develop your characters as complex human beings.

There are places where writing is acting and acting is writing. I'm not so interested in the divisions. I'm interested in the way things cross over.

To grow in craft is to increase the bredth of what I can do, but art is the depth, the passion, the desire, the courage to be myself and myself alone.

When you write things down, they sometimes take you places you hadn't planned.

Composers should write tunes that chauffeurs and errand boys can whistle.

In brief, I spend half my time trying to learn the secrets of other writers - to apply them to the expression of my own thoughts.

Writing is an antidote for loneliness.

It's nervous work. The state you need to write in is the state that others are paying large sums of money to get rid of.

I lived to write, and wrote to live.

Style has always been in my mind the author's Self, the creative expression of that Self.

Forget the boring old dictum, 'Write about what you know.' Instead, seek out an unknown yet knowable area of experience that's going to enhance your understanding of the world and write about that.

The first thing you have to learn when you go into the arts is to learn to cope with rejection. If you can't, you're dead.

You may be able to take a break from writing, but you won't be able to take a break from being a writer.

Improve yourself by other men's writings thus attaining effortlessly what they acquired through great difficulty.

For me, a play is a form of writing which isn't complete until it is interpreted by actors. But it's still a form of writing. And so most of my time is spent thinking about how to write a sentence.