Writing Quotes

If you would not be forgotten, as soon as you are rotten, either write things worth reading or do things worth the writing.

Benjamin Franklin

Thus, in a real sense, I am constantly writing autobiography, but I have to turn it into fiction in order to give it credibility.

Katherine Paterson, The Spying Heart, 1989

That everybody is allowed to learn to read spoileth in the long run not only writing but thinking.

Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra

Writing, I think, is not apart from living. Writing is a kind of double living. The writer experiences everything twice. Once in reality and once in the mirror which waits always before or behind.

Catherine Drinker Bowen

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

Report writing, like motor - Car driving and love - Making, is one of those activities which almost every Englishman thinks he can do well without instruction. The results are of course usually abominable.

Tom Margerison, "A Random Walk in Science" compiled by R. L. Weber, edited by E. Mendoza

You know what I say to people when I hear they? re writing an anti - war book?? I say, why don? t you write an anti - Glacier book instead? What he meant, of course, was that there would always be wars, that they were as easy to stop as glaciers. I believe that, too.

Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughter - House 5

Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself.

Truman Capote

Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice; journalism what will be read once.

Cyril Connolly, Enemies of Promise (1938)

I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. N. B. This quote is commonly attributed to Voltaire, but it is not found in his writing.

S. G. Tallentyre

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

Thomas a Kempis

Fiction writing is great. You can make up almost anything.

Ivana Trump

Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man.

Sir Francis Bacon

Real seriousness in regard to writing is one of two absolute necessities. The other, unfortunately, is talent.

Ernest Hemingway

Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins commited in previous lives.

James Joyce

Major writing is to say what has been seen, so that it need never be said again.

Delmore Schwartz

True glory consists in doing what deserves to be written in writing what deserves to be read and in so living as to make the world happier for our living in it.

Pliny the Elde

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.

Ludwig van Beethoven

Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.

E. L. Doctorow

Not only the studying and writing of history but also the honoring of it both represent affirmations of a certain defiant faith - A desperate, unreasoning faith, if you will - But faith nevertheless in the endurance of this threatened world - Faith in the total essentiality of historical continuity.

George Frost Kennan

God is love, but get it in writing.

Gypsy Rose Lee

To attract good fortune, spend a new coin on an old friend, share an old pleasure with a new friend, and lift up the heart of a true friend by writing his name on the wings of a dragon.

Chinese Prove

Writing only leads to more writing.

Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

This is the challenge of writing. You have to be very emotionally engaged in what you? re doing, or it comes out flat. You can? t fake your way through this.

Real Live Preacher, RealLivePreacher. com Weblog, January 29, 2004

Without words, without writing and without books there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity.

Hermann Hesse

If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead, either write something worth reading or do things worth writing.

Benjamin Franklin

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

No nation ancient or modern ever lost the liberty of freely speaking, writing, or publishing their sentiments, but forthwith lost their liberty in general and became slaves.

John Peter Zenge

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

Jessamyn West