Tuesday Quotes: 25 Quotes about Writing

I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of hunger for life that gnaws in us all. ~Richard Wright, American Hunger, 1977

I try to leave out the parts that people skip. ~Elmore Leonard

What I like in a good author is not what he says, but what he whispers. ~Logan Pearsall Smith, "All Trivia," Afterthoughts, 1931

Substitute "damn" every time you're inclined to write "very;" your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be. ~Mark Twain

Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart. ~William Wordsworth


Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass. ~Anton Chekhov


I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions. ~James Michener

If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster. ~Isaac Asimov

No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous. ~Henry Brooks Adams, The Education of Henry Adams, 1907

Be obscure clearly. ~E.B. White


A synonym is a word you use when you can't spell the other one. ~Baltasar Gracián


When something can be read without effort, great effort has gone into its writing. ~Enrique Jardiel Poncela

Writing comes more easily if you have something to say. ~Sholem Asch

Writing is a struggle against silence. ~Carlos Fuentes


What would there be in a story of happiness? Only what prepares it, only what destroys it can be told. ~André Gide

The road to hell is paved with adverbs. ~Stephen King

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live. ~Henry David Thoreau, Journal, 19 August 1851

Writing is both mask and unveiling. ~E.B. White


Let's hope the institution of marriage survives its detractors, for without it there would be no more adultery and without adultery two thirds of our novelists would stand in line for unemployment checks. ~Peter S. Prescott


It's not plagiarism - I'm recycling words, as any good environmentally conscious writer would do. ~Uniek Swain

An author in his book must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere. ~Gustave Flaubert

Sit down, and put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it. ~Colette, Casual Chance, 1964


Writing is a way of talking without being interrupted. ~Jules Renard, Journal, 10 April 1895

An original writer is not one who imitates nobody, but one whom nobody can imitate. ~Chateaubriand, Le Génie du Christianisme, 1802

The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar and familiar things new. ~Samuel Johnson