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Quotes about writing

377 quotes from 206 people

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For fear of the newspapers politicians are dull, and at last they are too dull even for the newspapers.
G. K. Chesterton1874–1936All Things Considered (1908)
- Journalism
- Politics
In the very books in which philosophers bid us scorn fame, they inscribe their names.
Cicero107–43 BC
- Philosophy
The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.
Tom Clancy1947–2013
I’ve made up stuff that’s turned out to be real, that’s the spooky part.
Tom Clancy1947–2013The New York Times (27 July 1986)
All stories have a beginning, a middle and an ending, and if they’re any good, the ending is a beginning.
JCJames Clavell1921–1994Interview with Don Swaim (1986)
It’s a phonetic language. Anything can make sense. How do you think Dr. Seuss wrote any of that sh*t?
MCMatthew Clayfield
Never pick a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel.
Bill Clintonborn 1946
I don’t perceive my role as a newsman at all. I’m a comedian from stem to stern.
Stephen Colbertborn 1964When asked what he perceives his role to be, given that many young people claim to get their news from The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, on newsman.”Harvard University: A Conversation with Stephen Colbert” (1 December 2006).
- Humor
- Journalism
Reviewers are usually people who would have been poets, historians, biographers, etc., if they could; they have tried their talents at one or the other, and have failed; therefore they turn critics.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge1772–1834Lectures and Notes on Shakespeare and Other English Poets (1811–1818), Part I: “Lectures on Shakespeare and Milton. 1811–1812”, Lecture I, p. 36
- Clever Jabs
Many books require no thought from those who read them, and for a very simple reason; they made no such demand upon those who wrote them.
CCCharles Caleb Colton1777–1832Lacon (1820), Volume 2, Vol. II; CCXLVIII
- Reading
That writer does the most, who gives his reader the most knowledge, and takes from him the least time.
CCCharles Caleb Colton1777–1832Preface
- Knowledge
To him the meaning of an episode was not inside like a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale which brought it out only as a glow brings out a haze, in the likeness of one of these misty halos that sometimes are made visible by the spectral illumination of moonshine.
Joseph Conrad1857–1924Heart of Darkness (1899), Part IIn context
After all, it is style alone by which posterity will judge of a great work, for an author can have nothing truly his own but his style.
IDIsaac D'Israeli1766–1848Literary Miscellanies, Style.
A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul and that, I am sure, is why he does it.
Roald Dahl1916–1990“Goodbye school” in Boy: Tales of Childhood (1984)
- Freedom
Such is our pride, our folly, or our fate,
That few but such as cannot write, translate.
John Denham1615–1669To Sir Richard Fanshaw (1648), line 1
- Clever Jabs