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Quotes about writing

377 quotes from 206 people

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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
When I was first in Czechoslovakia, it occurred to me that I work in a society where as a writer everything goes and nothing matters, while for the Czech writers I met in Prague, nothing goes and everything matters.
Philip Roth1933–2018The Paris Review, “The Art of Fiction No. 84”, interview by Hermione Lee (1984)
- Freedom
To write a good love letter, you ought to begin without knowing what you mean to say and to finish without knowing what you have written.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau1712–1778
- Love
Whenever the last trumpet shall sound, I will present myself before the sovereign judge with this book in my hand, and loudly proclaim, thus have I acted; these were my thoughts; such was I.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau1712–1778Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1765-1770; published 1782), Book I
- Character
No story lives unless someone wants to listen.
The stories we love best do live in us forever. So, whether you come back by page or by the big screen, Hogwarts will always be there to welcome you home.
J. K. Rowlingborn 1965Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 London Premiere (July 2011)
- Reading
Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you.
Carl Sagan1934–1996Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (1980), Episode 11, “The Persistence of Memory”
- Reading
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
Life resembles a novel more often than novels resemble life.
George Sand1804–1876Metella (1833), ch. 1
- Life & Death
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
Writers may be classified as meteors, planets, and fixed stars.
Arthur Schopenhauer1788–1860Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), vol. 2, trans. R. J. Hollingdale in Essays and Aphorisms (1970)
Truth that is naked is the most beautiful, and the simpler its expression the deeper is the impression it makes.
Arthur Schopenhauer1788–1860“On Authorship and Style”, Parerga and Paralipomena (1851)
- Truth & Lies
If I were a better artist, I’d be a painter, and if I were a better writer, I’d write books — but I’m not, so I draw cartoons!
Charles M. Schulz1922–20001992, as quoted by Tom Tomorrow in his comic strip This Modern World (21 February 2000)
- Art
It is said that science fiction and fantasy are two different things. Science fiction is the improbable made possible, and fantasy is the impossible made probable.
Rod Serling1924–1975The Twilight Zone, “The Fugitive” (1962).
Every writer is a frustrated actor who recites his lines in the hidden auditorium of his skull.
Rod Serling1924–1975Rod Serling Vogue, (1 April, 1957).
- Acting
No matter what you do, somebody always imputes meaning into your books.
Dr. Seuss1904–1991