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Quotations by Subject: Writing
(Related Subjects: Books, Quotations, Journalism)
Showing quotations 91 to 120 of 126 quotations in our collections

It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous.: Robert Benchley (1889 - 1945)
Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.: Robert Heinlein (1907 - 1988)
Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed there are many rewards, if you disgrace yourself you can always write a book.: Ronald Reagan (1911 - 2004)
Every journalist has a novel in him, which is an excellent place for it.: Russel Lynes
The only thing I was fit for was to be a writer, and this notion rested solely on my suspicion that I would never be fit for real work, and that writing didn't require any.: Russell Baker (1925 - )
I don't think anyone should write their autobiography until after they're dead.: Samuel Goldwyn (1882 - 1974)
Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.: Samuel Johnson (1709 - 1784), from Boswell's Life of Johnson
Your manuscript is both good and original, but the part that is good is not original and the part that is original is not good.: Samuel Johnson (1709 - 1784), (attributed)
A poet ought not to pick nature's pocket. Let him borrow, and so borrow as to repay by the very act of borrowing. Examine nature accurately, but write from recollection, and trust more to the imagination than the memory.: Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 - 1834)
There are a lot of people who can't write and maybe shouldn't write.: Sarah Hepola, How To Add Video To Your Blog, SXSW 2006
Even writers need relief from words.: Sarah Vowell, O Magazine, March 2009
There is only one way to defeat the enemy, and that is to write as well as one can. The best argument is an undeniably good book.: Saul Bellow (1915 - 2005)
Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man.: Sir Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626)
The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes, in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning.: Sir Winston Churchill (1874 - 1965)
I'm all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let's start with typewriters.: Solomon Short
Advice to writers: Sometimes you just have to stop writing. Even before you begin.: Stanislaw J. Lec (1909 - 1966), "Unkempt Thoughts"
I never feel that I have comprehended an emotion, or fully lived even the smallest events, until I have reflected upon it in my journal; my pen is my truest confidant, holding in check the passions and disappointments that I dare not share even with my beloved.: Stephanie Barron, Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor, 1996
Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.: Stephen King (1947 - ), "Everything You Need to Know About Writing Successfully - in Ten Minutes", 1988
If you don't have the time to read, you don't have the time or the tools to write.: Stephen King (1947 - ), On Writing, p. 147
You can approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hopefulness, or even despair–the sense that you can never completely put on the page what’s in your mind and heart. You can come to the act with your fists clenched and your eyes narrowed, ready to kick ass and take down names. You can come to it because you want a girl to marry you or because you want to change the world. Come to it any way but lightly. Let me say it again: you must not come lightly to the blank page.: Stephen King (1947 - ), On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, 2000
You must not come lightly to the blank page.: Stephen King (1947 - ), On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, 2000
Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.: T. S. Eliot (1888 - 1965)
All a good letter has to do is make you feel special.: Takayuki Ikkaku, Arisa Hosaka and Toshihiro Kawabata, Animal Crossing: Wild World, 2005
It's not about the writing. It's about the feelings behind the words.: Takayuki Ikkaku, Arisa Hosaka and Toshihiro Kawabata, Animal Crossing: Wild World, 2005
Why do writers write? Because it isn't there.: Thomas Berger
A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.: Thomas Mann (1875 - 1955)
A great writer reveals the truth even when he or she does not wish to.: Tom Bissell, Truth in Oxiana, 2004
I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil.: Truman Capote (1924 - 1984)
If a writer wrote merely for his time, I would have to break my pen and throw it away.: Victor Hugo (1802 - 1885)
An author spends months writing a book, and maybe puts his heart's blood into it, and then it lies about unread till the reader has nothing else in the world to do.: W. Somerset Maugham (1874 - 1965), The Razor's Edge, 1943

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Showing quotations 91 to 120 of 126 quotations in our collections
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