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Quotes about writing

377 quotes from 206 people

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The symmetry of form attainable in pure fiction can not so readily be achieved in a narration essentially having less to do with fable than with fact. Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges…
Herman Melville1819–1891Billy Budd, Sailor (1891), Ch. 28
- Truth & Lies
One of the objects of a newspaper is to understand popular feeling and to give expression to it; another is to arouse among the people certain desirable sentiments; and the third is fearlessly to expose popular defects.
Mahatma Gandhi1869–1948Hind Swaraj (1909), Sect. 1
- Journalism
But I did not explain to you the other insidious aspect of writing. There is no way to stop. Writers go on writing long after it becomes financially unnecessary…because it hurts less to write than it does not to write.
Robert A. Heinlein1907–1988The Cat Who Walks Through Walls (1985), Chapter 3 (p. 34)
Oh, my Lolita, I have only words to play with!
Vladimir Nabokov1899–1977Lolita (1955)
When you publish a book, it’s the world’s book. The world edits it.
Philip Roth1933–2018“A Visit with Philip Roth,” interview with James Atlas, The New York Times Book Review (2 September 1979), p. BR1
I keep saying, Shakspeare, Shakspeare, you are as obscure as life is.
Matthew Arnold1822–1888Letter to Arthur Hugh Clough (c. 6 December 1847); note the alternate spelling of Shakespeare
The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means.
Oscar Wilde1854–1900The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), Act IIIn context
It is hard to be finite upon an infinite subject, and all subjects are infinite.
Herman Melville1819–1891Hawthorne and His Mosses (1850)
I write plays because dialogue is the most respectable way of contradicting myself.
Tom Stoppard1937–2025“Tom Stoppard,” profile by Kenneth Tynan, The New Yorker (19 December 1977)
No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free no one ever will.
Thomas Jefferson1743–1826Letter to George Washington (9 September 1792)
- Government
- Journalism
For the purposes of poetry a convincing impossibility is preferable to an unconvincing possibility.
Aristotle384–322 BCPoetics, 1461b.11
- Poetry
Writers may be disreputable, incorrigible, early to decay or late to bloom but they dare to go it alone.
John Updike1932–2009Accepting Edward MacDowell Medal, New York Times (26 August 1981)
I would rather be attacked than unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an author is to be silent as to his works.
Samuel Johnson1709–1784Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol III (26 March 1779)
- Fame
I have never known a novel that was good enough to be good in spite of its being adapted to the author’s political views.
Edith Wharton1862–1937Letter to Upton Sinclair (19 August 1927)
- Politics
The remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he is really very good — in spite of all the people who say he is very good.
Robert Graves1895–1985The Observer (6 December 1964)