Writing Quotes · Page 413

The cutting of the gem has to be finished before you can see whether it shines.

— Leonard Cohen

The privilege of being a writer is that you have this opportunity to slow down and to consider things.

— Chris Abani

“He who sacrifices his respect for love basically burns his body to obtain the light.”

— Amit Kalantri

The business of the novelist is not to relate great events, but to make small ones interesting.

— Arthur Schopenhauer

I think new writers everywhere need opportunities to get published.

— Greg Egan

Every word she writes is a lie, including "and" and "the."

— Mary McCarthy

I think striking the right tone for your story is, if you like, the alchemical work of writing.

— Julia Leigh

Grand. There's a word I really hate. It's a phony. I could puke every time I hear it.

— Anonymous

Librarians and romance writers accomplish one mission better than anyone, including English teachers: we create readers for life - and what could…

— Susan Elizabeth Phillips

My songwriting, when I'm writing, is nothing like it is in its finished form - but you have to start somewhere.

— Christine McVie

Oblivion is the dark page, whereon Memory writes her light-beam characters, and makes them legible; were it all light, nothing could be…

— Thomas Carlyle

Worry destroys the ability to write. Ill health is bad in the ratio that it produces worry which attacks your subconscious and…

— Ernest Hemingway

“...a writing in the sand which all may read but few understand." - Philip Jose Farmer in 'Riders of the Purple Wage”

— Philip Jose Farmer

Being fired was the best luck of my life. It made me stop and reflect. It was the birth of my life…

— Jose Saramago

I like the idea of a writer being haunted by his own creation, especially if the writer resents the way the character…

— Bret Easton Ellis

Here’s the million-dollar question: how are you going to write this book if you’re afraid to start writing? Give your friend Doubt…

— Kami Garcia

In your language you have a form of poetry called the sonnet…There are fourteen lines, I believe, all in iambic pentameter. That’s…

— Madeleine L'Engle

I'm writing this down, because it is going to be hard for me to say it. Because this is probably our last…

— Ann Brashares

I spent many years in grad school in English, so I've read a lot in a variety of genres. But adventure fantasy…

— Saladin Ahmed

“Mr. Wellins said it didn’t matter what a writer intended his work to mean, that the only thing that mattered was what…

— Anonymous

Many Christians in the evangelical tradition use words like "conversion," "regeneration," "justification," "born-again," etc. all as more or less synonyms to mean…

— N. T. Wright

My first novel was turned down by half a dozen publishers. And even after having published five or six books, I wasn't…

— Ian Rankin

When I'm writing a novel, which is what I like to write, I get up early, sit zazen, make a pot of…

— Ruth Ozeki

When I was growing up, my parents asked me what I wanted to do, and I said that I wanted to live…

— Jonah Hill

That's point of writing: building what you need, right?

— Daphne Gottlieb

What a lonely and silly thing it is to be an Armenian writer in America.

— William Saroyan

On my tombstone just write, 'The sorest loser that ever lived.'

— Earl Weaver

Most writers do similar things in their minds. It's how the mind works, basically.

— Raymond Pettibon

Writing is largely about time, while visual art is largely about space.

— Douglas Coupland

Everybody writes about what they are talking but I am doing opposite.

— Erdem

Foolish writers and readers are created for each other.

— Horace Walpole

“Don't listen to writers. They're messed up - that's why they're writers!”

— Chocolate Waters

“Own anything you want in your writing and then let it go.”

— Natalie Goldberg

Maybe one thing is that you have to find the best way to write whatever works better for you.

— Ann M. Martin

I've been writing poems and stories since I was about 13.

— Kevin Powers

In utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable.

— John Steinbeck

The artists who want to be writers, read the reviews; the artists who want to write, don't.

— William Faulkner

Writing 'February' made me realize that breaking form is a way of letting the song be human.

— Dar Williams

Letter writing is the only device combining solitude with good company.

— Lord Byron

I want to see some scripts written by women and projects being directed by women.

— Eleanor Tomlinson