Writing Quotes · Page 325

Making a decision to write was a lot like deciding to jump into a frozen lake.

— Maya Angelou

All autobiography is storytelling; all writing is autobiography.

— J. M. Coetzee

Mike Leigh is my all-time favourite writer/director/creator.

— Greta Gerwig

I don't write tracts, I write novels. I'm not a preacher, I'm a fiction writer.

— Ursula K. Le Guin

I came to New York to write and direct, and when I got here, a lot of my rage came out.

— George C. Wolfe

I want to do public speaking and cause campaigning. I want to write a book.

— Bristol Palin

I don't really write for an audience. I just write what the subject seems to me to require.

— Garry Wills

Writing a picture book is like writing 'War and Peace' in Haiku.

— Mem Fox

I think the best advice I give is to try not to write. Try not to overwrite, try not to make it…

— Elmore Leonard

Every fine story must leave in the mind of the sensitive reader an intangible residuum of pleasure, a cadence, a quality of…

— Willa Cather

I stand in the mist and cry, thinking of myself standing in the mist and crying, and wondering if I will ever…

— Erica Jong

I wrote 'The Zombie Survival Guide' because I wanted to read it, and nobody else was writing it. All I've been doing…

— Max Brooks

I don't consciously start writing a play that involves issues. After it's done, I sit back like everyone else and think about…

— Suzan-Lori Parks

The most damning revelation you can make about yourself is that you do not know what is interesting and what is not.

— Kurt Vonnegut

I've done a lot of writing for other people, other projects, and what I tried to do with the music I'm putting…

— Teddy Geiger

I mixed with a lot of peasants, workers, artists and writers, all deprived of work. That's when I understood human beings have…

— Mikis Theodorakis

Whether your purpose for writing is artistic expression, communication with friends and family, the healing of the inner life, or achieving public…

— Pat Schneider

“Motivation is more like a skill, akin to reading or writing, that can be learned and honed. Scientists have found that people…

— Charles Duhigg

After all, most writing is done away from the typewriter, away from the desk. I'd say it occurs in the quiet, silent…

— Henry Miller

Writing a novel is a very hard thing to do because it covers so long a space of time, and if you…

— Maxwell Perkins

I do still read comics since I started writing for DC, but nowhere near as much as I used to, and I'm…

— Karen Traviss

Orwell is almost our litmus test. Some of his satirical writing looks like reality these days. When you have someone like Cheney…

— John Pilger

So that the life of a writer, whatever he might fancy to the contrary, was not so much a state of composition,…

— Laurence Sterne

I've been rapping and writing since junior high school, just having fun with it as a hobby. Then I got signed to…

— Jacki-O

I started writing plays, but the fact that plays don't last forever was too much for me to bear.

— Lena Dunham

I like to write in all different genres. I just like a new challenge.

— Alison McGhee

When I try to write I try to write something different every time. That's the challenge.

— Bob Seger

“Reading is a way to escape the real world. Writing is a way to create a new one.”

— Giuseppe Bianco

“That woman must have been a husky in a previous life.”

— Mary Papas

Being able to read, write, do your sums really transforms a human being.

— Amartya Sen

The writer's curse is that even in solitude, no matter its duration, he never grows lonely or bored.

— Criss Jami

Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting.

— Robert Frost

Those authors who would find many readers, must endeavour to please while they instruct.

— Samuel Johnson

That’s one of the nice things about writing, or any art; if the thing’s real, it just lives.

— Woody Allen

As writers, we all have an agenda, but if you recognize that agenda in a book, then you've failed.

— Janet Evanovich

What do you do when Mom leaves you alone like this? (Kat) I write romance novels. (Acheron)

— Sherrilyn Kenyon

I want to write a story for people where they finish it, and it sticks with them.

— Sylvia Day

There is a terrible, mean American resentment toward a writer who tries to do many things.

— Susan Sontag

“Everything you invent is true: you can be sure of that. Poetry is a subject as precise as geometry.”

— Julian Barnes

Curiosity is the best motive for writing: curiosity about the world at large, or about oneself.

— Michael Korda