Writing Quotes

Measure your minds height by the shadow it casts.

The story is always better than your ability to write it. My belief about this is that if you ever get to the point that you think you've done a story justice, you're in the wrong business.

Don't be 'a writer'. Be writing.

There are no rules in writing. There are useful principles. Throw them away when they're not useful. But always know what you're throwing away.

I did write some code in Java once, but that was the island in Indonesia.

A computer does not substitute for judgment any more than a pencil substitutes for literacy. But writing without a pencil is no particular advantage.

I write a manifesto and I want nothing, yet I say certain things, and in principle I am against manifestoes, as I am also against principles.

The learned fool writes his nonsense in better language than the unlearned, but it is still nonsense.

Writing is like sausage making in my view; you'll all be happier in the end if you just eat the final product without knowing what's gone into it.

A book in a man's brain is better off than a book bound in calf - at any rate it is safer from criticism.

The only pictures worth making are the ones that are playing with fire.

Adventure is just a romantic name for trouble. It sounds swell when you write about it, but it's hell when you meet it face to face in a dark and lonely place.

Good books, like good friends, are few and chosen; the more select, the more enjoyable.

I have never thought of writing for reputation and honor. What I have in my heart must come out; that is the reason why I compose.

Anything that isn't writing is easy

Really, the only thing a psychiatrist can do that a good (fishing) guide can't is write prescriptions.

Generally, my writing is influenced by living, by absorbing everything that happens to me and my actions.

All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.

It’s daunting to find the language so foreign, so distant, but also so thrilling. One is absolved of responsibility when the language is incomprehensible.

Writers are the exorcists of their own demons.

Don't worry about writing a book or getting famous or making money. Just lead an interesting life.

Those who write are writers. Those who wait are waiters.

The ratio of literacy to illiteracy is constant, but nowadays the illiterates can read and write.

When I write songs, I try to remove myself a little bit. Obviously they're very personal to me, but it feels easier if I feel like I'm writing characters.

Ideas are cheap. I have more ideas now than I could ever write up. To my mind, it's the execution that is all-important.

I went to college, but I learned to write by reading - and writing.

Writing is like going to bed with a beautiful woman and afterwards she gets up, goes to her purse and gives me a handful of money.

I dare you all to write one more thing that you won't say to my face. Because I will make you say it. In that manner. That is a threat.

I write probably 80 percent of my stuff over the winter.

Never think, because you cannot write a letter easily, that it is better not to write at all. The most awkward note imaginable is better than none.

No it is not easy to write. It is as hard as breaking rocks. Sparks and splinters fly like shattered steel.

And the idea of just wandering off to a cafe with a notebook and writing and seeing where that takes me for awhile is just bliss.

Writing in English was a major challenge. I didn't want other songwriters to write for me. I wanted to preserve the spirit of my songs in Spanish. I am the same Shakira in English as I am in Spanish.

I think it's important to be sincere. And I could be the most sincere just staying in [my] mother language actually. And that's the reason why I stay composing and writing in French.

There is more to literacy than 'reading' and 'writing'.

Every time you do something that is important, write down what you expect will happen.

We write because we believe the human spirit cannot be tamed and should not be trained.

The most important story we'll ever write in life is our own-not with ink, but with our daily choices.

For the writer, there is nothing quite like having someone say that he or she understands, that you have reached them and affected them with what you have written.

Unless we remember we cannot understand.

My words, my writing, my actions—these have never been for myself alone, either directly or indirectly. There is no such thing as an artist who creates art only for himself. That is masturbation.

Hunters will tell you that a moose is a wily and ferocious forest creature. Nonsense. A moose is a cow drawn by a three-year-old.

I have forced myself to begin writing when I've been utterly exhausted, when I've felt my soul as thin as a playing card…and somehow the activity of writing changes everything.

You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.

He is an emancipated thinker who is not afraid to write foolish things.

I miss you so much your absence causes me, at times, accute pain. I don't mean sexually. I mean in connection with my writing.

Producing writing is not so much like filling a basin or pool once, but rather getting water to keep flowing through till finally it runs clear.

The poet can only write the poems; it takes the reader to complete the meaning.

It takes hard writing to make easy reading.

What's good about writing is that when you write novels or fiction, people can see that the problems in one region are similar to problems in another region.