Quotes about writing
writing broken trying
I try to write a certain amount each day, five days a week. A rule sometimes broken is better than no rule. Herman Wouk
writing blue black
Painting is marvelous; it makes you happier and more patient. Afterwards you do not have black fingers as with writing, but blue and red ones. Hermann Hesse
writing feet able
If my life were not a dangerous, painful experiment, if I did not constantly skirt the abyss and feel the void under my feet, my life would have no meaning and I would not have been able to write anything.
writing literature growing
Among the letters my readers write me, there is a certain category which is continuously growing, and which I see as a symptom of the increasing intellectualization of the relationship between readers and literature.
writing superfluous
Many a poem is marred by a superfluous word. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
writing biographies
A life that is worth writing at all is worth writing minutely.
writing past milton
Every author has the whole past to contend with; all the centuries are upon him. He is compared with Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton.
writing heart looks
Look, then, into thine heart, and write!
writing numbers bird
Tolstoi explains somewhere in his writings why, in his opinion, "Science for Science's sake" is an absurd conception. We cannot know all the facts since they are infinite in number. We must make a selection ... guided by utility ... Have we not some better occupation than counting the number of lady-birds in existence on this planet? Henri Poincare
writing written related
Everything that I have written is closely related to something that I have lived through. Henrik Ibsen
writing feelings baths
Writing has... been to me like a bath from which I have risen feeling cleaner, healthier, and freer.
writing would-be use
The sign is determined at the moment I use it and for the object of which it must form a part. For this reason I cannot determine in advance signs which never change, and which would be like writing: that would paralyze the freedom of my invention. Henri Matisse
writing boundaries connected
I have always felt that if I am very personal and connected with what I myself am living, my writing will transcend ecclesial boundaries. Henri Nouwen
writing play journal
I keep a journal, and every day I write down one great play that I had that day. I don't write down any negatives. Heather O'Reilly
writing wind paper
When you have committed enough words to paper, you feel you have a spine stiff enough to stand up in the wind. But when you stop writing, you find that's all you are - a spine, a row of rattling vertebrae, dried out like an old quill pen. Hilary Mantel
writing years firsts
'Show up at the desk' is one of the first rules of writing, but for 'Wolf Hall' I was about 30 years late.
writing linear novel
I'm a very organised and rational and linear thinker, and you have to stop all that to write a novel.
writing thinking should-have
I think it took me half a page of 'Wolf Hall' to think: 'This is the novel I should have been writing all along.'
writing cutting world
Busyness, I feel increasingly, is the writer's curse and downfall. You read too much and write too readily, you become cut off from your inner life, from the flow of your own thoughts, and turned far too much towards the outside world.
writing thinking historical-novels
You think you're writing one historical novel and it turns into three, and I'm quite used to a short story turning into a novel - that's happened through my whole career.
writing empty worst
Of all fatiguing, futile, empty trades, the worst, I suppose, is writing about writing. Hilaire Belloc
writing way language
If you can describe clearly without a diagram the proper way of making this or that knot, then you are a master of the English language.
writing army blow
Write as the wind blows and command all words like an army!
writing butterfly blood
... on these expanded membranes [butterfly wings] Nature writes, as on a tablet, the story of the modifications of species, so truly do all changes of the organisation register themselves thereon. Moreover, the same colour-patterns of the wings generally show, with great regularity, the degrees of blood-relationship of the species. As the laws of nature must be the same for all beings, the conclusions furnished by this group of insects must be applicable to the whole world. Henry Walter Bates
writing lazy idlers
There is probably no greater idler than myself. And I would consider myself a lazy-bones if I did not write so many volumes, and if I did not admire my diligence once I begin writing. Henryk Sienkiewicz
writing ideas peg
All words are pegs to hang ideas on. Henry Ward Beecher
writing men names
I have known many an instance of a man writing a letter and forgetting to sign his name, but this is the only instance I have ever known of a man signing his name and forgetting to write the letter.
writing men victory
It is defeat that turns bone to flint; it is defeat that turns gristle to muscle; it is defeat that makes men invincible. Do not then be afraid of defeat. You are never so near to victory as when defeated in a good cause.
writing thinking creating
Thinking is creating with God, as thinking is writing with the ready writer; and worlds are only leaves turned over in the process of composition, about his throne.
writing media assuming
Just as we would not traditionally assume that someone is literate if they can read but not write, we should not assume that someone possesses media literacy if they can consume but not express themselves Henry Jenkins
writing people trying
If I should certainly say to a novice, 'Write from experience and experience only,' I should feel that this was rather a tantalizing monition if I were not careful immediately to add, 'Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost.' Henry James
writing character novel
What is either a picture or a novel that is not character?
writing thinking evil
Make him [the reader] think the evil, make him think it for himself, and you are released from weak specifications.