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Quotes about writing

377 quotes from 206 people

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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
I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you might nudge the world a little or make a poem that children will speak for you when you are dead.
Tom Stoppard1937–2025The Real Thing (1982), Act II, scene V
- Poetry
In the old times, women did not get their lives written, though I don’t doubt many of them were much better worth writing than the men’s.
Harriet Beecher Stowe1811–1896The Pearl of Orr’s Island: A Story of the Coast of Maine (1862).
- Women
Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own.
Jonathan Swift1667–1745The Battle of the Books, preface (1704)
- Humor
Proper words in proper places, make the true definition of a style.
Jonathan Swift1667–1745Letter to a Young Clergyman (January 9, 1720)
A traveller’s chief aim should be to make men wiser and better, and to improve their minds by the bad, as well as good, example of what they deliver concerning foreign places.
Jonathan Swift1667–1745Gulliver’s Travels (1726), Part IV: A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms, Chapter XIIIn context
- Wisdom
To be completely cured of newspapers, spend a year reading the previous week’s newspapers.
Nassim Nicholas Talebborn 1960The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010), p. 21
- Clever Jabs
- Journalism
I sometimes hold it half a sin
To put in words the grief I feel;
For words, like Nature, half reveal
And half conceal the Soul within.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson1809–1892In Memoriam A.H.H. (1849), Canto VIn context
- Emotion
There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up the pen to write.
William Makepeace Thackeray1811–1863The History of Henry Esmond (1852), Bk. II, Ch. 1.
- Thinking
If a secret history of books could be written, and the author’s private thoughts and meanings noted down alongside of his story, how many insipid volumes would become interesting, and dull tales excite the reader!
William Makepeace Thackeray1811–1863The History of Pendennis (1848-1850), Ch. 42.
- Reading
Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism.
Hunter S. Thompson1937–2005
- Journalism
- Truth & Lies
Frankly, I have no taste for either poverty or honest labor, so writing is the only recourse left me.
Hunter S. Thompson1937–2005Letter to Arch Gerhart (29 January 1958), p. 106
- Work
Fiction is based on reality unless you’re a fairy-tale artist, you have to get your knowledge of life from somewhere. You have to know the material you’re writing about before you alter it.
Hunter S. Thompson1937–2005Associated Press interview (2003)
How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.
Henry David Thoreau1817–1862August 19, 1851
- Life & Death
I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence.
J. R. R. Tolkien1892–1973The Lord of the Rings