Writing Quotes · Page 255

I have always found writing pleasant and don't understand what people mean by 'throes of creation.'

— E. M. Forster

I am what I am again: a writer. I have metabolized the injury into art.

— Julia Cameron

I don't think any writer chooses what his or her work is called.

— Jennifer Weiner

Two sorts of writers possess genius: those who think, and those who cause others to think.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Writing poetry helps me to write my fiction; each thing helps the other.

— Sandra Cisneros

I have a car business and if I had to do an estimate on my face, I would probably write it off.

— Jim Watt

My father was a writer, so I grew up writing and reading and I was really encouraged by him.

— Anne Lamott

I really think I write about everyday life. I don't think I'm quite as odd as others say I am.

— Edward Gorey

Writing in English was a major challenge. I didn't want other songwriters to write for me. I wanted to preserve the spirit…

— Shakira

I don't know where my ideas come from, but I know where they come to. They come to my desk, and if…

— Philip Pullman

I write because I love to. I'm very, very fortunate to have found something that I love doing that also earns my…

— Christopher Paul Curtis

“A writer has no use for the clock. A writer lives in an infinity of days, time without end, ploughed under.”

— Jeanette Winterson

I prefer writing for myself to perform, I guess. But if I had to choose, I'd rather perform in someone's movie than…

— Kristen Schaal

All writing is a form of manipulation, of course, but you realize that a plain sentence can actually do so much.

— Colm Toibin

Don't write something that is your passion project because all it will do is get the passion stomped out of you.

— Thomas Lennon

The novel is a territory where one does not make assertions; it is a territory of play and of hypotheses.

— Milan Kundera

My theory is that everything an actor does, from the way he looks at his watch to the way he moves across…

— Bernard Sahlins

“To me [Edgar Allan Poe's] prose is unreadable—like Jane Austin's [sic]. No there is a difference. I could read his prose on…

— Mark Twain

It's usually very, very hard for me to pick up a script that was written and try and see myself as a…

— Eric Bana

The most common human act that writing a novel resembles is lying. The working novelist lies daily, very complexly and at great…

— William Gibson

“We keep drifting in time but do not pause to even think and reflect for a while. Life is truly lived in…

— Avijeet Das

Write with abandon and no constraints for first draft. Cut brutally and save in separate files on second draft. Add conflict; don't…

— Francesca Lia Block

I started writing for myself when I didn't know how to understand how I was feeling, and I didn't know how to…

— Sharon Van Etten

My teachers always said, "You're very talented, but don't set your heart on art. You're only a girl." I was inspired by…

— Carolee Schneemann

It's always helpful to put things down on paper. That's why I started writing.

— Brett Young

Critics sometimes appear to be addressing themselves to works other than those I remember writing.

— Joyce Carol Oates

We were writing songs about girls when we still thought girls had cooties.

— Isaac Hanson

A mediocre mind thinks it writes divinely; a good mind thinks it writes reasonably.

— Jean de la Bruyere

I have a lot of respect for people who write a whole book because I've heard it will kill you.

— Mary H.K. Choi

Women can spin very well; but they cannot make a good book of cookery.

— Samuel Johnson

I used to think, 'How can I write my life story? I'm still living it.

— Frank Serpico

I like to write. I love to write. But I write just for myself and my own pleasure.

— J. D. Salinger

Another older writer that had a huge influence on me is Chekhov. More contemporarily, it's hard to say.

— Chad Harbach

Never take back what you've written. You never know where it'll take you.

— Eugenia Vela

The writer's job is the job of a clown …the clown who also talks about sorrow.

— Kenzaburo Oe

The writer is always courted by invitations from the all-too- familiar.

— Mason Cooley

Even in so-called realist or conventional writing there can be defamiliarization.

— Leni Zumas

In writing one draws in the rest, the forgotten parts.

— Edmund White

I loved doing 'Frisky Business.' I didn't come up with it. I think John Oliver and the writers did.

— Jessica Williams

“How could I write about life when I'd never had a love affair or a baby or seen anybody die?”

— Sylvia Plath