Quotes about writing
writing lace sleeves
The best writing has no lace on its sleeves. Walt Whitman
writing worry waiting
The secret of it all, is to write in the gush, the throb, the flood, of the moment – to put things down without deliberation – without worrying about their style – without waiting for a fit time or place. I always worked that way. I took the first scrap of paper, the first doorstep, the first desk, and wrote – wrote, wrote…By writing at the instant the very heartbeat of life is caught.
writing drug use
I am deeply moved when I write. I get turned on by it. I've never used any drugs for stimulation. I don't use words loosely. When I'm working and the right word comes, there is an answering resonance within me. There is also a hardness of intention that goes with it. There is no idleness in it. Saul Bellow
writing sea distraction
The writer cannot make the seas of distraction stand still, but he [or she] can at times come between the madly distracted and the distractions.
writing thinking ideas
I think everything has its place. So if the ideas or the fluidity isn't coming in writing, maybe it's related to ingestions. Saul Williams
writing emulation reader
A writer is a reader moved to emulation.
writing heart long
A writer is in the broadest sense a spokesman of his community. Through him that community comes to know its heart. Without such knowledge, how long can it survive?
writing long ordinary
I blame myself for not often enough seeing the extraordinary in the ordinary. Somewhere in his journals, Dostoyevky remarks that a writer can begin anywhere, at the most commonplace thing, scratch around in it long enough, pry and dig away long enough, and lo!, soon he will hit upon the marvelous.
writing trying looks
The way I sometimes approach my work, when I look at a script for the first time, is to identify what the archetypes are and what the writing is trying to do in that context. Sarah Gadon
writing order mind
Thoroughly to unfold the labyrinths of the human mind is an arduous task.... In order to dive into those recesses and lay them open to the reader in a striking and intelligible manner, 'tis necessary to assume a certain freedom in writing, not strictly perhaps within the limits prescribed by rules. Sarah Fielding
writing want awful
Writing a novel is like childbirth: once you realize how awful it really is, you never want to do it again. Sarah Dessen
writing wrapping-paper notes
I write thank-you notes the minute I throw the wrapping paper away.
writing school trying
I love YA, and it's been a really good fit for me. But at some point, I would like to try something else: a collection of short stories, or writing about something other than high school. A lot has happened to me since I was eighteen.
writing thinking worry
I used to worry I was entirely uninteresting, but the truth is I think if my life was more exciting I'd never have any time to write.
writing meditation calm
That's what you need for your writing - to learn how to be present, learn how to be calm. So take that nap, do that meditation. Sandra Cisneros
writing voice destruction
Writing is the destruction of every voice, of every point of origin. Roland Barthes
writing practice space
The discourse on the Text should itself be nothing other than text, research, textual activity, since the Text is that social space which leaves no language safe, outside, nor any subject of the enunciation in position as judge, master, analyst, confessor, decoder. The theory of the Text can coincide only with a practice of writing.
writing frustration skulls
Every writer is a frustrated actor who recites his lines in the hidden auditorium of his skull. Rod Serling
writing men thinking
It has forever been thus: So long as men write what they think, then all of the other freedoms - all of them - may remain intact. And it is then that writing becomes a weapon of truth, an article of faith, an act of courage.
writing thinking justice
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. Robin McKinley
writing artist editors
The artists who want to be writers, read the reviews; the artists who want to write, don't. William Faulkner
writing thinking play
Even when I'm writing plays I enjoy having company and mentally I think of that company as the company I'm writing for. Wole Soyinka
writing important gestation
I consider the process of gestation just as important as when you're actually sitting down putting words to the paper.
writing down-and lessons
But the ultimate lesson is just sit down and write. That's all.
writing bad-writing firsts
It is better to write a bad first draft than to write no first draft at all. Will Shetterly
writing creativity academia
Well, I wanted to be a philosopher, which is the idlest occupation in the world. I wanted to be involved in abstract thought, but because of various problems with the authorities I wasn't able to pull that one off. A lifetime of idleness in academia would have really suited me. So I was thrown out, as it were. Other than that, there seemed no possible idle occupations, so writing . . . although writing isn't exactly idleness. There's an enormous tension between indolence and languor. Will Self
writing men land
The good diarist writes either for himself alone or for a posterity so distant that it can safely hear every secret and justly weigh every motive. For such an audience there is need neither of affectation nor of restraint. Sincerity is what they ask, detail, and volume; skill with the pen comes in conveniently, but brilliance is not necessary; genius is a hindrance even; and should you know your business and do it manfully, posterity will let you off mixing with great men, reporting famous affairs, or having lain with the first ladies in the land. Virginia Woolf
writing men perfect
Mr. Beerbohm in his way is perfect ... He has brought personality into literature, not unconsciously and impurely, but so consciously and purely that we do not know whether there is any relation between Max the essayist and Mr. Beerbohm the man. We only know that the spirit of personality permeates every word that he writes ... He is without doubt the prince of his profession.
writing pleasure certain
As nobody can possibly tell me whether one's writing is bad or good, the only certain value is one's own pleasure. I am sure of that.
writing thinking mood
I was in a queer mood, thinking myself very old: but now I am a woman again - as I always am when I write.
writing mind excellence
A masterpiece is something said once and for all, stated, finished, so that it's there complete in the mind, if only at the back.
writing sight personality
We are nauseated by the sight of trivial personalities decomposing in the eternity of print.
writing tricks novel
It’s such a confidence trick, writing a novel. The main person you have to trick into confidence is yourself. This is hard to do alone. Zadie Smith