Writing Quotes · Page 610

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

— Stephen King

The scope of what I have to say determines the length of what I write.

— Edward M. Lerner

Most rock journalism is people who can not write interviewing people who can not talk

— Frank Zappa

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

— Lee Grant

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

— Ann Patchett

“I love being an author - its the first job I've ever had where I'm paid to daydream. Greig Beck”

— Greig Beck

Those who say they want to be writers, and aren’t writing, don’t.

— Ernest Hemingway

To remain pure, a novel has to cast a moral puzzle. Anything else is mere negotiation.

— Anita Brookner

I think that's the hardest part for an artist is finding their voice and learning how to write, finding what they have…

— Morgan James

I have always known that writing fiction had little effect on the world; that if it did, young men would not have…

— Andre Dubus

“If the voices in your head make you cry, you're a lunatic. Put their words on paper, and you're a writer.”

— D. VonThaer

The most important thing when starting out with essay writing is to find a voice with which you're comfortable. You need to…

— Anne Fadiman

The language of the age is never the language of poetry, except among the French, whose verse, where the thought or image…

— Thomas Gray

“It is splendid to be a great writer, to put men into the frying pan of your imagination and make them pop…

— Gustave Flaubert

I can write anywhere. I write in airports. I write on airplanes. I've written in the back seats of taxis. I write…

— Garrison Keillor

I always loved rapping ever since Snoop said "1-2-3-4," I was repeating lines, but I didn't start writing my own lyrics until…

— Fashawn

More and more, I play myself, as I get older. Even as a writer, I never got typecast. I've always bounced from…

— Jim Piddock

The minute I landed back in Alaska, it was back to hip boots and fish guts. This cultural flipping wasn't easy -…

— Leigh Newman

“Yet for quixotic reasons--namely, that I enjoyed writing obits--I had decided to scale back on articles about city life in order to…

— Avi Steinberg

I had always been interested in screenwriting, ever since I could write things down as a child. Obviously, I started as an…

— John Francis Daley

I try not to cover Sudan from afar. I feel really uncomfortable writing about Sudan when I'm not there. It always looks…

— Rebecca Hamilton

You need a good editor because every writer thinks he can write a War and Peace, but by the time he gets…

— Samuel Johnson

This is, in part, why there is less magic in the world today. Magic is secret and secrets are magic, after all,…

— Erin Morgenstern

People I know who succeed don't mind working. Those who are competent seem to like doing things well -- not stopping because…

— Sylvia Earle

The only time I know that something is true is the moment I discover it in the act of writing.

— Jean Malaquais

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

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

— Shakira

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

— Judy Delton

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

— Raymond Carver

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

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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

— Robert Cormier

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

— Anais Nin

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

— Grace Paley

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

— Charles Bukowski

Stop trying to write sentences and start trying to write stories.

— James Patterson

Writing is about culture and should be about everything. That's what makes it what it is.

— Irvine Welsh

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

— Stephen Leacock