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Quotes about writing

377 quotes from 206 people

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When I read Shakespeare I am struck with wonder
that such trivial people should muse and thunder
in such lovely language.
D. H. Lawrence1885–1930Pansies (1929)
- Clever Jabs
I have an object, a task, let me say the word, a passion. The profession of writing is a violent and almost indestructible one.
George Sand1804–1876Letter to Jules Boucoiran (4 March 1831), in Correspondance, ed. Georges Lubin, vol. 1, pp. 817–18
The truly great writer does not want to write: he wants the world to be a place in which he can live the life of the imagination.
Henry Miller1891–1980Henry Miller on Writing (1964), p. 22
And it is that word ‘hummy,’ my darlings, that marks the first place in The House at Pooh Corner at which Tonstant Weader fwowed up.
Dorothy Parker1893–1967Her “Constant Reader” book review of The House at Pooh Corner by A. A. Milne, in The New Yorker (October 20, 1928)
- Clever Jabs
It’s not a matter of old or new forms; a person writes without thinking about any forms, he writes because it flows freely from his soul.
Anton Chekhov1860–1904The Seagull (1896), Act IV
A dramatist is one who believes that the pure event, an action involving human beings, is more arresting than any comment that can be made upon it.
Thornton Wilder1897–1975Writers at Work interview (1958)
The Value of myth is that it takes all the things you know and restores to them the rich significance which has been hidden by the veil of familiarity.
C. S. Lewis1898–1963Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, p. 90
In this work are exhibited, in a very high degree, the two most engaging powers of an author. New things are made familiar, and familiar things are made new.
Samuel Johnson1709–1784Lives of the English Poets (1779–81), “Pope”, on The Rape of the Lock
Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison.
Samuel Johnson1709–1784Lives of the English Poets (1779–81)
The artist doesn’t have time to listen to the critics. The ones who want to be writers read the reviews, the ones who want to write don’t have the time to read reviews.
William Faulkner1897–1962Paris Review interview (1958)
- Art
Junk journalism is the evidence of a society that has got at least one thing right, that there should be nobody with the power to dictate where responsible journalism begins.
Tom Stoppard1937–2025Night and Day (1978), Act I
- Freedom
- Journalism
A petty reason perhaps why novelists more and more try to keep a distance from journalists is that novelists are trying to write the truth and journalists are trying to write fiction.
Graham Greene1904–1991Letter to critic Stephen Pile, The Sunday Times (London, 18 January 1981)
- Journalism
Mr. Aldous Huxley, who is perhaps one of those people who have to perpetrate thirty bad novels before producing a good one, has a certain natural — but little developed — aptitude for seriousness.
T. S. Eliot1888–1965“The Contemporary English Novelist”, La Nouvelle Revue française (1 May 1927)
- Clever Jabs
The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western World. No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity — much less dissent.
Gore Vidal1925–2012“Cue the Green God, Ted” (1991).
- America
- Journalism
The light that radiates from the great novels time can never dim, for human existence is perpetually being forgotten by man and thus the novelists’ discoveries, however old they may be, will never cease to astonish.
Milan Kundera1929–2023From The Art of the Novel, as quoted in “Here Be Dragons”, The Daily Telegraph (4 June 1988)