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Quotes about writing

377 quotes from 206 people

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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)
I think the reason I choose the comic approach so often is because it’s harder, therefore affording me the opportunity to show off.
Rita Mae Brownborn 1944Starting from Scratch (1989)
- Humor
News is what a chap who doesn’t care much about anything wants to read. And it’s only news until he’s read it. After that it’s dead.
Evelyn Waugh1903–1966Scoop (1938)
- Journalism
The hardest thing to do is to write straight honest prose on human beings. First you have to know the subject; then you have to know how to write.
Ernest Hemingway1899–1961A Letter from Cuba (1934)
Don’t loaf and invite inspiration; light out after it with a club, and if you don’t get it you will nonetheless get something that looks remarkably like it.
Jack London1876–1916“Getting into Print”, first published in 1903 in The Editor magazine
- Inspiration
It may sound fantastic to link the term “realism” with Conan; but as a matter of fact⁠—his supernatural adventures aside⁠—he is the most realistic character I ever evolved.
Robert E. Howard1906–1936From a letter to Clark Ashton Smith (23 July 1935)
All tales may come true; and yet, at the last, redeemed, they may be as like and unlike the forms that we give them as Man, finally redeemed, will be like and unlike the fallen that we know.
J. R. R. Tolkien1892–1973On Fairy-Stories (1939)
- Theology
For an author to write as he speaks is just as reprehensible as the opposite fault, to speak as he writes; for this gives a pedantic effect to what he says, and at the same time makes him hardly intelligible.
Arthur Schopenhauer1788–1860“On Style”, The Art of Literature (trans. T. Bailey Saunders)
- Talking
Style is not neutral; it gives moral directions.
Martin Amis1949–2023Novelists in Interview (1985) edited by John Haffenden
- Morality
Stories of imagination tend to upset those without one.
Terry Pratchett1948–2015Foreword to The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Fantasy (1998) by David Pringle, and The Definitive Illustrated Guide to Fantasy (2003) by David Pringle
- Clever Jabs
To have news value is to have a tin can tied to one’s tail.
T. E. Lawrence1888–1935Letter (1 April 1935); published in The Letters of T.E. Lawrence (1988), edited by Malcolm Brown.
- Fame
- Journalism
Space or science fiction has become a dialect for our time.
Doris Lessing1919–2013The Guardian, London (7 November 1988)
LEXICOGRAPHER — A writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge.
Samuel Johnson1709–1784A Dictionary of the English Language (1755)
- Comedy
Bright is the ring of words
When the right man rings them.
Robert Louis Stevenson1850–1894Songs of Travel and Other Verses (1896), No. XIV
- Poetry
Life resembles a novel more often than novels resemble life.
George Sand1804–1876Metella (1833), ch. 1
- Life & Death