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Quotes about writing

377 quotes from 206 people

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A man may well himself discover truth in what he wrote; for he was dealing all the time with things that came from thoughts beyond his own.
George MacDonald1824–1905The Fantastic Imagination (1893)
If there be music in my reader, I would gladly wake it.
George MacDonald1824–1905The Fantastic Imagination (1893)
- Reading
A fairytale, like a butterfly or a bee, helps itself on all sides, sips at every wholesome flower, and spoils not one.
George MacDonald1824–1905The Fantastic Imagination (1893)
If you aren’t careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.
Malcolm X1925–1965Speech at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem (13 December 1964), later published in Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements (1965), edited by George Breitman, p. 93
- Journalism
A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.
Thomas Mann1875–1955Essays of Three Decades (1942)
The writer’s joy is the thought that can become emotion, the emotion that can wholly become a thought.
Thomas Mann1875–1955Death in Venice (1912), Ch. 4, as translated by David Luke
- Emotion
Ten years from now, no one is going to care how quickly the books came out. The only thing that will matter, the only thing anyone will remember, is how good they were. That’s my main concern, and always will be.
George R. R. Martinborn 1948Official blog, (July 2007)
Tolkien made the wrong choice when he brought Gandalf back. Screw Gandalf. He had a great death and the characters should have had to go on without him.
George R. R. Martinborn 1948On a panel at Odyssey Con 2008 (April 2008)
The battle between good and evil is a legitimate theme for a Fantasy (or for any work of fiction, for that matter), but in real life that battle is fought chiefly in the individual human heart.
George R. R. Martinborn 1948infinity plus interview (2001)
- Good & Evil
There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.
W. Somerset Maugham1874–1965
I’m not interested in writing short stories. Anything that doesn’t take years of your life and drive you to suicide hardly seems worth doing.
Cormac McCarthy1933–2023The Wall Street Journal, November 20, 2009, “Hollywood’s Favorite Cowboy” by John Jurgensen
All words, in every language, are metaphors.
Marshall McLuhan1911–1980Laws of Media: The New Science (with Eric McLuhan) (1988), p. 120
Writing turned a spotlight on the high, dim Sierras of speech; writing was the visualization of acoustic space. It lit up the dark.
Marshall McLuhan1911–1980Counterblast (1969) (p. 14)
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
It is hard to be finite upon an infinite subject, and all subjects are infinite.
Herman Melville1819–1891Hawthorne and His Mosses (1850)