Quotes on Writing :: Finest Quotes

Writing Quotes

Writing books is certainly a most unpleasant occupation. It is lonesome, unsanitary, and maddening. Many authors go crazy.

H. L. Mencken

There are so many opportunities in life, that the loss of two or three capabilities is not necessarily debilitating. A handicap can give you the opportunity to focus more on art, writing, or music.

Jim Davis

The nearer I approach the end, the clearer I hear around me the immortal symphonies of the worlds which invite me. It is marvelous yet simple. For half a century I have been writing my thoughts in prose, verse, history, drama, romance, tradition, satire, ode and song - I have tried all; but I feel that I have not said a thousandth part of that which is in me. When I go down to the grave I can say like many others, "I have finished my day's work" but I cannot say, "I have finished my life's work"; my day's work will begin the next morning. The tomb is not a blind alley. It is an open thoroughfare. It closes in the twilight to open in the dawn. My work is only beginning; my work is hardly above its foundation. I would gladly see it mounting forever. The thirst for the infinite proves infinity.

Victor Marie Hugo

I feel within me the future life. I am like a forest that has been razed; the new shoots are stronger and brisker. I shall most certainly rise toward the heavens. The sun's rays bathe my head. The earth gives me its generous sap, but the heavens illuminate me with the reflection of-of worlds unknown. Some say the soul results merely from bodily powers. Why, then, does my soul become brighter when my bodily powers begin to waste away? Winter is above me, but eternal spring is within my heart. I inhale even now the fragrance of lilacs, violets, and roses, just as I did when I was twenty. The nearer my approach to the end, the plainer is the sound of immortal symphonies of worlds which invite me. It is wonderful yet simple. It is a fairy tale; it is history. For half a century I have been writing my thoughts in prose and in verse; history, philosophy, drama, romance, tradition, satire, ode, and song; all of these have I tried. But I feel that I haven't given utterance to the thousandth part of what lies within me. When I go to the grave I can say as others have said, "I have finished my day's work." But I cannot say, "I have finished my life." My day's work will begin again the next morning. The tomb is not a blind alley; it is a thoroughfare. It closes on the twilight, but opens on the dawn.

Victor Marie Hugo

t’s hard to believe that in the greatest democracy in the world, we need legislation to prevent the government from writing and paying for the news.

Senator John Kerry

A talent for drama is not a talent for writing, but is an ability to articulate human relationships.

Gore Vidal

No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.

Booker T. Washington

Never be entirely idle; but either be reading, or writing, or praying or meditating or endeavoring something for the public good.

Thomas Kempis

Writing is a solitary occupation. Family, friends and society are the natural enemies of a writer. He must be alone, uninterrupted and slightly savage if he is to sustain and complete an undertaking.

Laurence Clark Powell

The writer who loses his self-doubt, who gives way as he grows old to a sudden euphoria, to prolixity, should stop writing immediately: the time has come for him to lay aside his pen.

Sidonie Gabrielle

All my writing is about the recognition that there is no single reality. But the beauty of it is that you nevertheless go on, walking towards utopia, which may not exist, on a bridge which might end before you reach the other side.

Marguerite Young

Television has raised writing to a new low.

Samuel Goldwyn

Bureaucrats write memoranda both because they appear to be busy when they are writing and because the memos, once written, immediately become proof that they were busy.

Charles Peters

The universe has been quite literally writing upon humans for many thousands of years, and our alphabets are among the traits that nature has carved in order to cross our minds. Wild lands have caught deeper trails in my life than I will ever be able to make in the forest.

Joe Meeker†

Since writing JAWS, I've been lucky enough to do close to forty television shows about wildlife in the oceans, and yes, I have been attacked by sea creatures once in a while.

Peter Benchley

When I find someone I respect writing about an edgy, nervous wine that dithered in the glass, I cringe. When I hear someone I don't respect talking about an austere, unforgiving wine, I turn a bit austere and unforgiving myself. When I come across stuff like that and remember about the figs and bananas, I want to snigger uneasily. You can call a wine red, and dry, and strong, and pleasant. After that, watch out.

Kingsley Amis

I'm writing an unauthorized autobiography

Stephen Wright

Writing is a cop-out. An excuse to live perpetually in fantasy land, where you can create, direct and watch the products of your own head. Very selfish.

Monica Dickens

If writing seems hard, it’s because it is hard. It’s one of the hardest things people do.

William Zinsser

An editor should tell the author his writing is better than it is. Not a lot better, a little better.

Eliot, T. S.

That folk music led to learning to play, and making things up led to what turns out to be the most lucrative part of the music business - writing, because you get paid every time that song gets played.

Jackson Browne

Style in painting is the same as in writing a power over materials, whether words or colours, by which conceptions or sentiments are conveyed.

Sir Joshua Reynolds

The first law for the historian is that he shall never dare utter an untruth. The second is that he shall suppress nothing that is true. Moreover, there shall be no suspicion of partiality in his writing, or of malice.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.

Ernest Hemingway

Writing must always have intention because words have power.

Suheir Hammad

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