Writing Quotes · Page 607

“Writing is an intimate transaction between two people, conducted on paper...”

— William Zinsser

While you're writing, you can't concentrate nearly as well on what the speaker is saying.

— Marilyn vos Savant

If a rating is bad in another sport, do you see a writer say, 'This sport's over?' No.

— Dana White

My greatest regret as a writer is that I've never been able to include as many jokes as I'd like.

— Robert Harris

The day when I am no more than a writer I shall cease to be a writer.

— Albert Camus

I escaped the [Southern-writer] label because I didn't and don't write about the South.

— William S. Burroughs

When I do have spare time to write, I'm tempted to spend it napping.

— Ravyn Lenae

My mother always said that everyone should be required to write an autobiography of their lives.

— Diane Keaton

A good ground rule for writing in any genre is, start with a form, then undermine its confidence in itself. Ask what…

— M. John Harrison

“Proust called these moments of unity between writer and reader “that fruitful miracle of a communication in the midst of solitude.”

— Susan Cain

I was not born into the world of the stuntman and the daredevil; I was born into the world of theater and…

— Philippe Petit

I've been writing since I was six years old. It's hard to imagine stopping. I would hate to think that I've already…

— Don Winslow

I write to music, so every script I have has its own playlist. Music just opens me up to the emotions that…

— Gina Prince-Bythewood

I would be happier if people who went through MFA programs also were already, by then, deeply committed readers of poetry because…

— Edward Hirsch

Part of being a writer is feeling that constant dissatisfaction, thinking about what else you could do, and also knowing when it's…

— Leni Zumas

A lot of the time writers are just sponges... for what's around them, and so books are helpful for focusing your mind…

— Marcus Mumford

I guess what concerns me always is the need for a field, a rich compost, for any art to flourish. But however…

— Adrienne Rich

When I'm writing a lyric, I totally forget about the music. I'm just looking at the lyric and thinking about it almost…

— Scott Walker

The writing is what gives me the joy, especially editing myself for the page, and getting something ready to show to the…

— George Carlin

My new house has a deck that wraps around my writing room; my writing room has many windows, and outside the windows…

— Julia Cameron

If you really think back to the great writers, there's a lot of happiness in Tolstoy; there's a lot of love, there's…

— George Saunders

If an author be supposed to involve his thoughts in voluntary obscurity, and to obstruct, by unnecessary difficulties, a mind eager in…

— Samuel Johnson

You cannot teach somebody to write a masterpiece, but you can certainly teach them how to improve their writing skills. And you…

— Margaret Atwood

“Zen holds that the faith must be based not on the dead Scriptures, but on living facts, that one must turn over…

— Kaiten Nukariya

“Writer's Block is just an excuse by people who don't write for not writing.”

— Giando Sigurani

You can't be a storyteller and a speechwriter at the same time.

— Joss Whedon

Any fool can write a novel but it takes real genius to sell it.

— J. G. Ballard

A poem, once it's written, is meant to be read with the inner voice of the person who reads it.

— Tony Harrison

You have to give up a great deal of life, your personal life, to be a writer.

— Doris Lessing

When I write, I enjoy myself so much that what is being written really needs no reader

— Guillermo Cabrera Infante

The writer considers sayability before anything else.

— Mason Cooley

There's a word for a writer who never gives up: published.

— Anonymous

I would teach from nine to four, sleep an hour, and write from six until midnight, night after night.

— Marguerite Young

More books have resulted from somebody's need to write than from anybody's need to read.

— Ashleigh Brilliant

But it is the fear, not the writing that defeats me. Everything is not a masterpiece.

— Pearl Cleage

He would stab his best friend for the sake of writing an epigraph on his tombstone.

— Oscar Wilde

“Never believe a writer. Listen to them, by all means, but never believe them.”

— Stephen King

“A writer who has perfect writing skills and zero honesty is not an author but a sales person.”

— Sandra Chami Kassis

“It is the kernel of truth in every story that makes its writing beautiful beyond standards.”

— psyche roxas-mendoza

Text is just ink on a page until a reader comes along and gives it life.

— Louise Rosenblatt