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Quotes about writing

377 quotes from 206 people

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Literature is news that STAYS news.
Ezra Pound1885–1972ABC of Reading (1934), Ch. 2 (p. 29 in the 1961 paperback)
- Reading
You were merely asked to bend, but you chose to crawl.
L. K. Advaniborn 1927To the Indian press as Information and Broadcasting Minister (1977), on its conduct during the Emergency
- Clever Jabs
- Journalism
The art of storytelling is reaching its end because the epic side of truth, wisdom, is dying out.
Walter Benjamin1892–1940“The Storyteller” (1936)
- Wisdom
I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.
Virginia Woolf1882–1941A Room of One’s Own (1929), Ch. 3, p. 51
- Women
Every autobiography is concerned with two characters, a Don Quixote, the Ego, and a Sancho Panza, the Self.
W. H. Auden1907–1973The Dyer’s Hand, and Other Essays (1962), “Hic et Ille”
To write something long, sophisticated, and coherent means, at least in part, to become more complex, articulate, and deeper in personality.
Jordan Petersonborn 1962Beyond Order (2021), p. 185
Cheat your landlord if you can and must, but do not try to shortchange the Muse. It cannot be done. You can’t fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal.
William S. Burroughs1914–1997The Western Lands (1987), ch. 2
- Art
There are people. There are stories. The people think they shape the stories, but the reverse is often closer to the truth.
Alan Mooreborn 1953“Down Among the Dead Men”, Swamp Thing Annual #2, 1985
A story with a moral appended is like the bill of a mosquito. It bores you, and then injects a stinging drop to irritate your conscience.
O. Henry1862–1910Strictly Business (1910)
- Morality
Life isn’t divided into genres. It’s a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel. You know, with a bit of pornography if you’re lucky.
Alan Mooreborn 1953“The Mustard magazine interview” (January 2005)
- Life & Death
You ask me why I do not write something… I think one’s feelings waste themselves in words; they ought all to be distilled into actions and into actions which bring results.
Florence Nightingale1820–1910Letter to a friend, quoted in The Life of Florence Nightingale (1913) by Edward Tyas Cook, p. 94
I write fiction and I’m told it’s autobiography, I write autobiography and I’m told it’s fiction, so since I’m so dim and they’re so smart, let them decide what it is or it isn’t.
Philip Roth1933–2018Deception: A Novel (1990)
I am a galley slave to pen and ink.
Honoré de Balzac1799–1850Letter to Zulma Carraud (2 July 1832), translated by C. Lamb Kenney
Literature is the Thought of thinking Souls.
Thomas Carlyle1795–1881Sir Walter Scott (1838)
- Reading
All words, in every language, are metaphors.
Marshall McLuhan1911–1980Laws of Media: The New Science (with Eric McLuhan) (1988), p. 120