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Quotations by Subject: Writing
(Related Subjects: Books, Quotations, Journalism)
Showing quotations 31 to 60 of 117 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
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 mean 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
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)
No letter from a lover is ever more welcome, brings more joy, than a publisher's expression of interest does to a new author!: Judith Brocklehurst, Darcy And Anne
Literature is an occupation in which you have to keep proving your talent to people who have none.: Jules Renard (1864 - 1910)
Writing is the only profession where no one considers you ridiculous if you earn no money.: Jules Renard (1864 - 1910)
A writer is a writer not because she writes well and easily, because she has amazing talent, because everything she does is golden. In my view, a writer is a writer because even when there is no hope, even when nothing you do shows any sign of promise, you keep writing anyway.: Junot Diaz, O Magazine, November 2009
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
The only reason for being a professional writer is that you can't help it.: Leo Rosten (1908 - )
Inspiration is wonderful when it happens, but the writer must develop an approach for the rest of the time... The wait is simply too long.: Leonard Bernstein (1918 - 1990)
Learn as much by writing as by reading.: Lord Acton
I take the view, and always have, that if you cannot say what you are going to say in twenty minutes you ought to go away and write a book about it.: Lord Brabazon (1884 - 1964)

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Showing quotations 31 to 60 of 117 quotations in our collections
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