Quotes about writing
writing men thinking
I generalized rashly: That is what kills political writing, this absurd pretence that you are delivering a great utterance. You never do. You are just a puzzled man making notes about what you think. You are not building the Pantheon, then why act like a graven image? You are drawing sketches in the sand which the sea will wash away. Walter Lippmann
writing names snow
You write your name in the snow Yet say nothing. Voltaire
writing enemy nouns
The adjective is the enemy of the noun. Variant: The adjective is the enemy of the substantive.
writing voice painting
Writing is the painting of the voice.
writing facts dictionary
The multiplicity of facts and writings is become so great that every thing must soon be reduced to extracts and dictionaries.
writing hatred literature
The only reward to be expected from literature is contempt if one fails and hatred if one succeeds.
writing thinking simplicity
To make yourself understood you have to think plain and write plain. William Feather
writing concise vigorous
Vigorous writing is concise. William Strunk, Jr.
writing weakness needs
Remember, it is no sign of weakness or defeat that your manuscript ends up in need of major surgery. This is a common occurrence in all writing, and among the best writers.
writing should-have drawing
A drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.
writing interesting announcing
Instead of announcing what you are about to tell is interesting, make it so.
writing should-have drawing
A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.
writing thinking years
I feel like I'm almost ready to write fiction about the border. But even after 10 years of writing nonfiction about it, I don't think I know quite enough to do it right. William T. Vollmann
writing thinking want
[Ernest ]Hemingway always said, "Write about what you know." I think you can do that, and if you want to write about what you don't know, you can. It just takes a lot more work.
writing apology matter
If this advertisement be not sufficient, I can only protrude my wormlike tendrils of apology, craving forbearance on the grounds that a writer must write about what he knows, and since I know nothing about any subject it scarcely matters where I dabble.
writing thinking want
I think that we're all, as human beings, so limited. If we want to write about ourselves, that's fairly easy. And if we write about our friends or our families, we can do that. But if we want to project ourselves somewhere beyond our personal experience we're going to fail unless we get that experience or we borrow it from others.
writing feelings progress
I have this feeling of wending my way or plundering through a mysterious jungle of possibilities when I am writing. This jungle has not been explored by previous writers. It never will be explored. It's endlessly varying as we progress through the experience of time. These words that occur to me come out of my relation to the language which is developing even as I am using it. William Stafford
writing process found
A writer is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things.
writing matter no-matter-what
What you have to do as a writer is . . . write day in and day out no matter what happens.
writing assessment differences
You shouldn't have standards that inhibit you from writing It really doesn't make any difference if you are good or bad today. The assessment of the product is something that happens after you've done it.
writing mind pieces
A student comes to me with a piece of writing, holds it out, says, 'Is this good?' A whole sequence of emergencies goes off in my mind. That's not a question to ask anyone but yourself.
writing people finals
I'm simply the happiest, the placidest, when I'm writing, and so I suppose that that, for me, is the final answer. ... It's fine therapy for people who are perpetually scared of nameless threats as I am most of the time. William Styron
writing past judging
Perhaps the critics are right: this generation may not produce literature equal to that of any past generation-who cares? The writer will be dead before anyone can judge him-but he must go on writing, reflecting disorder, defeat, despair, should that be all he sees at the moment, but ever searching for the elusive love, joy, and hope-qualities which, as in the act of life itself, are best when they have to be struggled for, and are not commonly come by with much ease, either by a critic's formula or by a critic's yearning.
writing people scared
Writing is a fine therapy for people who are perpetually scared of nameless threats... for jittery people.
writing problem one-word
Writers ever since writing began have had problems, and the main problem narrows down to just one word - life.
writing practice long
Style comes only have long, hard practice and writing.
writing men thinking
From the writer's point of view, critics should be ignored, although it's hard not to do what they suggest. I think it's unfortunate to have critics for friends. Suppose you write something that stinks, what are they going to say in a review? Say it stinks? So if they're honest, they do, and if you were friends you're still friends, but the knowledge of your lousy writing and their articulate admission of it will be always something between the two of you, like the knowledge between a man and his wife of some shady adultery.
writing age neurosis
The good writing of any age has always been the product of someone's neurosis.
writing faces hell
Let's face it, writing is hell.
writing age literature
The good writing of any age has always been the product of someone's neurosis, and we'd have a mighty dull literature if all the writers that came along were a bunch of happy chuckleheads.
writing thinking hands
I try to get a feeling of what's going on in the story before I put it down on paper, but actually most of this breaking-in period is one long, fantastic daydream, in which I think about anything but the work at hand. I can't turn out slews of stuff each day. I wish I could. I seem to have some neurotic need to perfect each paragraph—each sentence, even—as I go along.
writing self form
Writing is a form of self-flagellation.
writing duty
The writer's duty is to keep on writing.