Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Writing Quotes

Just some writing quotes I found interesting. No clue where I found them - I had them saved in a file. Enjoy!



Gaston Bachelard: A word is a bud attempting to become a twig. How can one not dream while writing? It is the pen which dreams. The blank page gives the right to dream.
Robert Frost: All the fun is in how you say a thing.
Henry Ward Beecher: All words are pegs to hang ideas on.
John Osborne: Asking a writer what he thinks about criticism is like asking a lamppost what it feels about dogs.
Ben Franklin: Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.
Socrates: Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings so that you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for.
Flannery O'Connor: Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them.
Henry David Thoreau: How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.
Peter De Vries: I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paperwork.
William Faulkner: I never know what I think about something until I read what I've written on it.
William Shakespeare: If I chance to talk a little wild, forgive me.
Robert Benchley: It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous.
Edmund Morrison: Like stones, words are laborious and unforgiving, and the fitting of them together, like the fitting of stones, demands great patience and strength of purpose and particular skill.
Mark Twain: Most writers regard truth as their most valuable possession, and therefore are most economical in its use.
Ernest Hemingway: My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.
Andre Gide: Only those things are beautiful which are inspired by madness and written by reason.
Charles Caleb Colton: Our admiration of fine writing will always be in proportion to its real difficulty and its apparent ease.
Robert Frost: Poets need not go to Niagara to write about the force of falling water.
Joseph Pulitzer: Put it before them briefly so they will read it, clearly so they will appreciate it, picturesquely so they will remember it, and above all, accurately so they will be guided by its light.
Napoleon Hill: Reduce your plan to writing. The moment you complete this, you will have definitely given concrete form to the intangible desire.
Ray Bradbury: We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.
Peter F. Drucker: We know nothing about motivation. All we can do is write books about it.
Logan Pearsall Smith: What I like in a good author isn't what he says, but what he whispers.
Samuel Johnson: What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.
Samuel Goldwyn: What we want is a story that starts with an earthquake and builds to a climax.
Erica Jong: When I sit down at my writing desk, time seems to vanish. I think it's a wonderful way to spend one's life.
Anne Sexton: When I'm writing, I know I'm doing the thing I was born to do.
Samuel Lover: When once the itch of literature comes over a man, nothing can sure it but the scratching of a pen.
Ivan Levison: When your writing is filled with detail, it has a lot more impact.
Rudyard Kipling: Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.

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