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Quotations by Subject: Writing
(Related Subjects: Books, Quotations, Journalism)
Showing quotations 31 to 60 of 126 quotations in our collections

This is the sixth book I've written, which isn't bad for a guy who's only read two.: George Burns (1896 - 1996)
A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom will make it clearer? 4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?: George Orwell (1903 - 1950), "Politics and the English Language", 1946
In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and literary criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning.: George Orwell (1903 - 1950), "Politics and the English Language", 1946
Good writing takes more than just time; it wants your best moments and the best of you.: Gordon Atkinson, RealLivePreacher.com weblog, 10-09-04
I think people want their illusions and writers are mostly illusion. When you read their words, you read a flattened, incomplete version of the writer.: Gordon Atkinson, RealLivePreacher.com Weblog, January 05, 2004
I write because I'm afraid to say some things out loud.: Gordon Atkinson, Real Live Preacher weblog, 03-13-05
If you want to write you must have faith in yourself. Faith enough to believe that if a thing is true about you, it is likely true about many people. And if you can have faith in your integrity and your motives, then you can write about yourself without fear.: Gordon Atkinson, Real Live Preacher weblog, 07-25-06
See things as they are and write about them. Don’t waste your creative energy trying to make things up. Even if you are writing fiction, write the things you see and know.: Gordon Atkinson, Real Live Preacher weblog, 07-25-06
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.: Gordon Atkinson, RealLivePreacher.com Weblog, January 29, 2004
No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else's draft.: H. G. Wells (1866 - 1946)
Keep writing. Keep doing it and doing it. Even in the moments when it's so hurtful to think about writing.: Heather Armstrong, Keynote Speech, SXSW 2006
How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.: Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862)
Be generous, be delicate, and always pursue the prize.: Henry James (1843 - 1916), from his essay about the rules of writing
I am a galley slave to pen and ink.: Honore de Balzac (1799 - 1850)
The cure for writer's cramp is writer's block.: Inigo DeLeon
You must keep sending work out; you must never let a manuscript do nothing but eat its head off in a drawer. You send that work out again and again, while you're working on another one. If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success - but only if you persist.: Isaac Asimov (1920 - 1992)
It is not a bad idea to get in the habit of writing down one's thoughts. It saves one having to bother anyone else with them.: Isabel Colegate
Writing well means never having to say, 'I guess you had to be there.': Jef Mallett, Frazz, 07-29-07
The first step in blogging is not writing them but reading them.: Jeff Jarvis, BuzzMachine, 07-10-2006
Write something to suit yourself and many people will like it; write something to suit everybody and scarcely anyone will care for it.: Jesse Stuart
I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.: Joan Didion (1934 - )
If any man wish to write in a clear style, let him be first clear in his thoughts; and if any would write in a noble style, let him first possess a noble soul.: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 - 1832)
The tendinous part of the mind, so to speak, is more developed in winter; the fleshy, in summer. I should say winter had given the bone and sinew to literature, summer the tissues and the blood.: John Burroughs (1837 - 1921), The Snow-Walkers
Stories don’t just make us matter to each other—maybe they’re also the only way to the infinite mattering he’d been after for so long.: John Green, An Abundance of Katherines, 2008
There is this unwritten contract between author and reader and I think not ending your book kind of violates that contract.: John Green, The Fault in Our Stars, 2012
You have a choice in this world, I believe, about how to tell sad stories.: John Green, The Fault in Our Stars, 2012
The way you define yourself as a writer is that you write every time you have a free minute. If you didn't behave that way you would never do anything.: John Irving (1942 - )
You can't think yourself out of a writing block, you have to write yourself out of a thinking block.: John Rogers, Kung Fu Monkey, 06-25-11
Say all you have to say in the fewest possible words, or your reader will be sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words or he will certainly misunderstand them.: John Ruskin (1819 - 1900)
About the most originality that any writer can hope to achieve honestly is to steal with good judgment.: Josh Billings (1818 - 1885)

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