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Quotes about writing

377 quotes from 206 people

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A serious writer is not to be confused with a solemn writer. A serious writer may be a hawk or a buzzard or even a popinjay, but a solemn writer is always a bloody owl.
Ernest Hemingway1899–1961Death in the Afternoon (1932), Ch. 16
When I read the rules of criticism, I immediately inquire after the works of the author who has written them, and by that means discover what it is he likes in a composition.
Joseph Addison1672–1719The Guardian (1713), No. 115
I am not interested in the ephemeral — such subjects as the adulteries of dentists. I am interested in those things that repeat and repeat and repeat in the lives of the millions.
Thornton Wilder1897–1975The New York Times (6 November 1961)
I have been a soreheaded occupant of a file drawer labeled “Science Fiction” … and I would like out, particularly since so many serious critics regularly mistake the drawer for a urinal.
Kurt Vonnegut1922–2007“Science Fiction”; originally published in The New York Times Book Review, 5 September 1965
- Clever Jabs
But the greatest thing by far is to have a command of metaphor. This alone cannot be imparted by another; it is the mark of genius, for to make good metaphors implies an eye for resemblances.
Aristotle384–322 BCPoetics, 1459a.4
- Genius
I cannot and do not live in the world of discretion, not as a writer, anyway. I would prefer to, I assure you — it would make life easier. But discretion is, unfortunately, not for novelists.
Philip Roth1933–2018Deception: A Novel (1990)
Science Fiction writers, I am sorry to say, really do not know anything. We can’t talk about science because our knowledge of it is limited and unofficial, and usually our fiction is dreadful.
Philip K. Dick1928–1982“How to Build a Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later” (1978)
I fancy mankind may come, in time, to write all aphoristically, except in narrative; grow weary of preparation, and connection, and illustration, and all those arts by which a big book is made.
Samuel Johnson1709–1784The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1785) (16 August 1773)
The fact is, that the public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing. Journalism, conscious of this, and having tradesmanlike habits, supplies their demands.
Oscar Wilde1854–1900The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891)
- Journalism
The great art in writing advertisements is the finding out a proper method to catch the reader’s eye; without which a good thing may pass over unobserved, or be lost among commissions of bankrupt.
Joseph Addison1672–1719The Tatler, No. 224 (14 September 1710)
- Business
All over the world, wherever there are capitalists, freedom of the press means freedom to buy up newspapers, to buy writers, to bribe, buy and fake “public opinion” for the benefit of the bourgeoisie.
Vladimir Lenin1870–1924Collected Works, Vol. 32, pp. 504–9.
- Freedom
- Journalism
If one were searching for the best means to efface and kill in a whole nation the discipline of self-respect, the feeling for what is elevated, he could do no better than take the American newspapers.
Matthew Arnold1822–1888Civilization in the United States (1888), p. 177
- America
- Journalism
A fairytale is not an allegory. There may be allegory in it, but it is not an allegory. He must be an artist indeed who can, in any mode, produce a strict allegory that is not a weariness to the spirit.
George MacDonald1824–1905The Fantastic Imagination (1893)
- Art
Autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful. A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying, since any life when viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats.
George Orwell1903–1950“Benefit Of Clergy: Some Notes On Salvador Dalí,” Dickens, Dali & Others: Studies in Popular Culture (1944)
- Truth & Lies
I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, “Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know.”
Ernest Hemingway1899–1961A Moveable Feast (1964), Ch. 2