Writing Quotes · Page 269

“The very persons who have taken away my time and space are those who have given me something to say.”

— Katherine Paterson

Like most-maybe all- writers, I learned to write by writing and, by example, by reading books.

— Francine Prose

Write your injuries in dust, your benefits in marble.

— Benjamin Franklin

I'm not here to write a song for you, I'm here to help you write a song for yourself.

— Miguel

Whatever (its) virtues, (the) writing explores the culture of work but marginalizes work itself.

— Maureen Corrigan

In writing, as in life, always be true to your character.

— Laurie Faria Stolarz

I've been a writer since I was 16. I didn't get published until I was 24. I know that sounds crazy.

— Markus Zusak

“Rich can live better than poor but they cannot live without poor.”

— Amit Kalantri

It is indeed not easy to distinguish affectation from habit; he that has once studiously developed a style, rarely writes afterwards with…

— Samuel Johnson

What is important-what lasts-in another language is not what is said but what is written. For the essence of an age, we…

— Peter Brodie

One of the obligations of the writer is to say or sing all that he or she can, to deal with as…

— Denise Levertov

I think that one is constantly startled by the things that appear before you on the page when you're writing.

— Shirley Hazzard

I think the novel form chose me. I was a writer before I became a criminal... my first instinct was to write.

— Gregory David Roberts

Writing is how I communicate my deepest beliefs, and what I hope are helpful observations about our dual citizenship, as children of…

— Anne Lamott

Our live experiences, fixed in aphorisms, stiffen into cold epigrams. Our heart's blood, as we write it, turns to mere dull ink.

— F. H. Bradley

If you write a written book, you're gonna get slowed up by lawyers wanting to see what you say about this person,…

— Jimmy Page

When I was writing my first novel, I smoked cigarettes. And when I think about what it was like to smoke, I…

— Dani Shapiro

I lead a very conventional life. I don't lead a writer's life. And I think that can be a source of suspicion…

— Joan Didion

My first book published in France was translated and titled Exercices d'Attente in 1972. It was a collection of short works written…

— Dumitru Tepeneag

Why did I become a writer? Because I grew up in New York City, and there were seven newspapers in New York…

— Anonymous

I suppose I like certainty as much as anyone else, but I also feel that the hidden costs are high, that we…

— Charles D'Ambrosio

The feeling persists that no one can simultaneously be a respectable writer and understand how a refrigerator works, just as no gentleman…

— Kurt Vonnegut

“According to my mother, I was a fiction writer before I'd written any ficton, by wich she meant not only that I…

— John Irving

A well-read writer, with good taste, is one who has the command of the wit of other men; he searches where knowledge…

— Isaac D'Israeli

I'm not very happy idle. There's always this voice in my head that says, 'I should be writing.

— Harlan Coben

I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us.

— Franz Kafka

Looking straight at the world is part of your duty as a writer.

— Pat Barker

“If you write what you love, that is success, is it not?”

— Leslie Soule

My writing always came out of a very personal place, out of an attempt to stay sane.

— Alain de Botton

The first writing of the human being was drawing, not writing.

— Marjane Satrapi

I've been very lucky. I've written for most of my idols and the contemporaries.

— Alan Zweibel

I'm still writing songs but leaving them a lot more open and not trying to control every nuance of it.

— Luke Temple

“Bless you. Be careful. Anyone intending to meddle with words needs such blessing, such warning.”

— Margaret Atwood

Writers who take on polarising issues are apt to step on a few toes.

— Lionel Shriver

Anthropological fieldwork is so much like writing a novel. You don't know what the hell is going on.

— Lily King

I write not for your farthing, but to try. How I your farthing writers, may outvie.

— Isaac Watts

The reason a poet is a poet is to write poems, not to advertise himself as a poet.

— Yehuda Amichai

I write for the same reason I read: because it's all there is for me.

— Christian Bauman

I think there are things I can't write in English that I wish I could write in Khmer.

— Chath Piersath

I started to write. And I wrote and wrote all through high school.

— Vera Nazarian