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Quotes about writing

377 quotes from 206 people

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An author in his book must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere.
Gustave Flaubert1821–1880Letters to Madame Louise Colet, 9 December 1852
Science fiction writers foresee the inevitable, and although problems and catastrophes may be inevitable, solutions are not.
Isaac Asimov1920–1992“How Easy to See the Future”, Natural History magazine (April 1975)
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
True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
As those move easiest who have learn’d to dance.
Alexander Pope1688–1744An Essay on Criticism (1711)In context
A well-written Life is almost as rare as a well-spent one.
Thomas Carlyle1795–1881Richter (1827).
- Life & Death
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
Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.
George Orwell1903–1950“Why I Write,” Gangrel (Summer 1946)
I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.
Blaise Pascal1623–1662Provincial Letters: Letter XVI (4 December 1656)
In the United States today, we have more than our share of the nattering nabobs of negativism.
Spiro Agnew1918–1996Speech in San Diego (September 11, 1970)
- Clever Jabs
- Journalism
I remember the players have often mentioned it as an honor to Shakespeare, that in his writing, whatsoever he penned, he never blotted out a line. My answer hath been, “Would he had blotted a thousand”.
Ben Jonson1572–1637Timber: or Discoveries
A tragedy can never suffer by delay: a comedy may, because the allusions or the manners represented in it maybe temporary.
Horace Walpole1717–1797Letter 123 To Robert Jephson (13 July 1777)
Beneath the rule of men entirely great,
The pen is mightier than the sword.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton1803–1873Richelieu (1839), Act II, Scene II
The aim of science is to discover and illuminate truth. And that, I take it, is the aim of literature, whether biography or history or fiction. It seems to me, then, that there can be no separate literature of science.
Rachel Carson1907–1964Acceptance speech of the National Book Award for Nonfiction (1952) for The Sea Around Us
- Science
Reality is not always probable, or likely. But if you’re writing a story, you have to make it as plausible as you can, because if not, the reader’s imagination will reject it.
Jorge Luis Borges1899–1986Discussion published in the Columbia Forum and later quoted in Worldwide Laws of Life: 200 Eternal Spiritual Principles (1998) by John Templeton
Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assault of thoughts on the unthinking.
John Maynard Keynes1883–1946National self-sufficiency, New Statesman and Nation (15 July 1933)
- Thinking