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Quotes about writing

377 quotes from 206 people

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To write a good love letter, you ought to begin without knowing what you mean to say and to finish without knowing what you have written.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau1712–1778
- Love
Don’t use words too big for the subject. Don’t say ‘infinitely’ when you mean ‘very’; otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.
C. S. Lewis1898–1963
Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.
Benjamin Franklin1706–1790
- Reading
A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.
G. K. Chesterton1874–1936Heretics (1905)
Don’t you wish you had a job like mine? All you have to do is think up a certain number of words! Plus, you can repeat words! And they don’t even have to be true!
Dave Barryborn 1947
- Dave Barry
Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.
C. S. Lewis1898–1963
- Art
The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.
Thomas Jefferson1743–1826
- Journalism
- Reading
I’m all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let’s start with typewriters.
Frank Lloyd Wright1867–1959
- Guns
Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book.
?UnattributedOften credited to Cicero
Don’t say it was ‘delightful’; make us say ‘delightful’ when we’ve read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers ‘Please, will you do the job for me?’
C. S. Lewis1898–1963
I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence.
J. R. R. Tolkien1892–1973The Lord of the Rings
No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader.
Robert Frost1874–1963The Figure a Poem Makes (1939)
I don’t give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.
Mark Twain1835–1910
I figured out why I’m not getting seriously rich. I write newspaper columns. Nobody ever makes newspaper columns into Major Motion Pictures starring Tom Cruise. The best you can hope for, with a newspaper column, is that people will like it enough to attach it to their refrigerators with magnets shaped like fruit.
Dave Barryborn 1947
- Dave Barry
- Journalism
You should never pick up a newspaper when you’re feeling good, because every newspaper has a special department, called the Bummer Desk, which is responsible for digging up depressing front-page stories with headlines like DOORBELL USE LINKED TO LEUKEMIA and OZONE LAYER COMPLETELY GONE DIRECTLY OVER YOUR HOUSE.
Dave Barryborn 1947
- Dave Barry
- Journalism