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Quotes about writing

377 quotes from 206 people

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I remember the players have often mentioned it as an honor to Shakespeare, that in his writing, whatsoever he penned, he never blotted out a line. My answer hath been, “Would he had blotted a thousand”.
Ben Jonson1572–1637Timber: or Discoveries
He was not of an age, but for all time!
Ben Jonson1572–1637To the Memory of My Beloved, the Author, Mr. William Shakespeare (First Folio, 1623), line 43
- Time
Thou art a monument, without a tomb,
And art alive still, while thy book doth live,
And we have wits to read, and praise to give.
Ben Jonson1572–1637To the Memory of My Beloved, the Author, Mr. William Shakespeare (First Folio, 1623), lines 22-24
- Reading
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
I want to give a picture of Dublin so complete that if the city suddenly disappeared from the earth it could be reconstructed out of my book.
James Joyce1882–1941Said in conversation with Frank Budgen, Zurich, 1918, as told by Budgen in his book James Joyce and the Making of “Ulysses” (1934), ch. IV
The pity is the public will demand and find a moral in my book — or worse they may take it in some more serious way, and on the honor of a gentleman, there is not one single serious line in it.
James Joyce1882–1941To Djuna Barnes, in an interview published in Vanity Fair (March 1922)
Shakespeare led a life of allegory: his works are the comments on it.
John Keats1795–1821To George and Georgiana Keats (14 February – 3 May 1819)
When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain,
John Keats1795–1821When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be (1818)In context
- Fear
- Life & Death
The freedom of the press works in such a way that there is not much freedom from it.
Grace Kelly1929–1982Attributed to Kelly in: Robert Andrews Ed. (1987) The Routledge dictionary of quotations
- Freedom
- Journalism
The job of the writer is to kiss no ass, no matter how big and holy and white and tempting and powerful.
KKKen Kesey1935–2001The Paris Review interview (1994)
Doing magic, you not only have to be able to do a trick, you have to have a little story line to go with it. And writing is essentially a trick.
KKKen Kesey1935–2001Trip of a Lifetime (1999)
When people ask me what I think is my best work, it’s the bus. There’re lots of books, but there’s only one bus.
KKKen Kesey1935–2001Trip of a Lifetime (1999)
- Art
Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assault of thoughts on the unthinking.
John Maynard Keynes1883–1946National self-sufficiency, New Statesman and Nation (15 July 1933)
- Thinking
Occasionally in life there are those moments of unutterable fulfillment which cannot be completely explained by those symbols called words. Their meanings can only be articulated by the inaudible language of the heart.
Martin Luther King Jr.1929–1968Martin Luther King, Jr., Nobel Lecture by The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Oslo, Norway (December 11, 1964) p. 1.
When asked, ‘How do you write?’ I invariably answer, ‘one word at a time.’
Stephen Kingborn 1947The Stand (1978) (Uncut), Preface (part 2)