Writing Quotes · Page 419

“The choices that bedevil the writer bedevil the translator ten times over.”

— Margaret Atwood

To write well it is first necessary to have something to say.

— Stephen Leacock

When you write, you are not either sex. But when you're read you are definitely gendered.

— Hilary Mantel

I cannot imagine any writer who would not fight for his peace and quiet.

— Wislawa Szymborska

I think that in order to write really well and convincingly, one must be somewhat poisoned by emotion.

— Edna Ferber

Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere.

— Anne Lamott

The secret of good writing is to say an old thing in a new way or to say a new thing in…

— Richard Harding Davis

He who does not expect a million readers should not write a line.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

It's so easy to think that this [celebrity] is reality; that people are lining up outside just to write down what I…

— Jennifer Lawrence

I have obsessed about my weight in some sort of way all my life. I used to write in my journal what…

— Valerie Bertinelli

I always played around with writing songs, but when you're spending a lot of time in bars, you have a lot of…

— Dave Gahan

“(On her son) I've met writer's block. He is short, diapered and keeps unplugging my laptop. Good news: he can be conquered…

— Cyrese Covelli

Many people who want to be writers don't really want to be writers. They want to have been writers. They wish they…

— James A. Michener

“My youthful dream of becoming a writer has been realized. I am so pleased I did not let my young self down.”

— Jack Gantos

Writing songs is not something I wanted to share with people for a long time. It was precious to me. I didnt…

— Ray LaMontagne

I definitely in filmmaking more and more find writing and directing a means to harvest material for editing. It's all about editing.

— Alexander Payne

Did I do and say these things? Yes, I did. Are there any mitigating circumstances? Not really, unless any circumstances {in other…

— Nick Hornby

“A man who is not born with the novel-writing gift has a troublesome time of it when he tries to build a…

— Mark Twain

Once I start work on a project, I don’t stop and I don’t slow down unless I absolutely have to. If I…

— Stephen King

Everyone eventually winds up writing about themselves - the problem is finding the best way to go about it. To write about…

— Jon Landau

We need the expressive arts, the ancient scribes, the storytellers, the priests. And that's where I put myself: as a storyteller. Not…

— Tanith Lee

I've always felt that the writing I responded to most - the novels and stories that compelled me, that felt like they…

— Jonathan Lethem

I try to make the writing as regular and regimented as possible. I usually get up at around 5 a.m. and read…

— Christopher Paul Curtis

“Writing can be taught or learned in the vacuum. We must say to students in every area of knowledge: "This is a…

— William Zinsser

To write is to descend, to excavate, to go underground.

— Anais Nin

A writer must take risks, defy the odds, be a bit obsessed and a little mad.

— Robert Cormier

WHEN YOU LEAVE YOUR TYPEWRITER YOU LEAVE YOUR MACHINE GUN AND THE RATS COME POURING THROUGH.

— Charles Bukowski

We write about what we don't know about what we know.

— Grace Paley

I feel as long as people enjoy what they read and learn something more, I have done my job as a writer.

— Ravi Subramanian

Because I write just at home, I'm just in my T-shirt and sneakers all the time.

— Christine Leunens

The most fun I ever have is sitting in with Rick writing, and we laugh at our own jokes.

— Adrian Edmondson

If you want to be a writer-stop talking about it and sit down and write!

— Jackie Collins

many writers believe in arrival without leaving home. They believe in talent but not skill.

— Judy Delton

I can't hire other people to write songs for me. I have to write them myself.

— Shakira

“Write what you know, and what do you know better than your own secrets?”

— Raymond Carver

It's all the same for me, how I teach, how I write, how I think.

— Paul Beatty

Writing is a matter of finding the appropriate balance of dinosaurs and sodomy

— Michael Swanwick

“If a book is not alive in the writer's mind, it is as dead as year-old horse shit.”

— Stephen King

I think people become consumed with selling a book when they need to be consumed with writing it.

— Ann Patchett

I started writing to reassure myself that I was still all here.

— Lee Grant