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Quotes about writing

377 quotes from 206 people

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Madame, all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you.
Ernest Hemingway1899–1961Death in the Afternoon (1932), Ch. 11
- Life & Death
You deal in the raw material of opinion, and, if my convictions have any validity, opinion ultimately governs the world.
Woodrow Wilson1856–1924Address to the Associated Press (20 April 1915)
- Journalism
If I were a better artist, I’d be a painter, and if I were a better writer, I’d write books — but I’m not, so I draw cartoons!
Charles M. Schulz1922–20001992, as quoted by Tom Tomorrow in his comic strip This Modern World (21 February 2000)
- Art
Scott took LITERATURE so solemnly. He never understood that it was just writing as well as you can and finishing what you start.
Ernest Hemingway1899–1961Letter to Arthur Mizener (12 May 1950); published in Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters 1917–1961 (1981) edited by Carlos Baker
Every writer hopes or boldly assumes that his life is in some sense exemplary, that the particular will turn out to be universal.
Martin Amis1949–2023The Observer [London] (30 August 1987)
If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed.
Benjamin Franklin1706–1790“Apology for Printers” (1730)
- Freedom
- Journalism
A character is never the author who created him. It is quite likely, however, that an author may be all his characters simultaneously.
Albert Camus1913–1960The Rebel (1951), Part 2: Metaphysical Rebellion
Power can be very addictive. And it can be corrosive. And it’s important for the media to call to account people who abuse their power.
George W. Bushborn 1946Interview with Matt Lauer (2017)
- Journalism
- Power
I don’t think about rules when I’m writing – that’s the great thing about writing: it’s the one place in my life that I can do whatever I want.
Alice Hoffmanborn 1952Interview (2015)
Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporter’s Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important far than they all.
Thomas Carlyle1795–1881On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History (1841), “The Hero as Man of Letters”
- Journalism
Personal columnists … are jackals and no jackal has been known to live on grass once he had learned about meat — no matter who killed the meat for him.
Ernest Hemingway1899–1961A Letter from Cuba (1934)
- Clever Jabs
- Journalism
As for modern Journalism, its not my business to defend it. It justifies its own existence by the great Darwinian principle of the survival of the vulgarest.
Oscar Wilde1854–1900The Critic as Artist (1891), Part I
- Journalism
Tom Birch is as brisk as a bee in conversation; but no sooner does he take a pen in his hand than it becomes a torpedo to him, and benumbs all his faculties.
Samuel Johnson1709–1784Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol I (1743)
- Clever Jabs
One great part of every human existence is passed in a state which cannot be rendered sensible by the use of wideawake language, cutanddry grammar and goahead plot.
James Joyce1882–1941Referring to Finnegans Wake in a letter to Harriet Shaw Weaver (24 November 1926)
- Sleep
In the mountains, the shortest way is from peak to peak: but for that, you need long legs. Aphorisms should be peaks: and those to whom they are spoken, big and tall.
Friedrich Nietzsche1844–1900Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883), Part I, Chapter 7
- Quotations