Able Quote by Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

In the mental disturbance and effort of writing, what sustains you is the certainty that on every page there is something left unsaid.

— Cesare Pavese

“To imagine writing as absence seems to be a simple repetition, in transcendental terms, of both the religious principle of the inalterable and yet…

— Michel Foucault

I was a new writer and I was supposed to write all the time, wasn't I? I had not yet discovered that there are…

— Stanley Crawford

“Writing is a form of intense thinking that takes a person on a journey into previously uncharted territory of the writer’s mind.”

— Kilroy J. Oldster

“Writing, when all is said and done, is an attempt to understand one's own circumstance and to clarify the confusion of existence, including insecurities…

— Isabel Allende

Writing requires the concentration of the writer, demands that nothing else be done except that.

— Carlos Fuentes

If the desire to write is not accompanied by actual writing, then the desire must be not to write.

— Hugh Prather

Writing is a consequence of having been 'haunted' by material. Why this is, no one knows.

— Joyce Carol Oates

“For days and weeks on end one racks one's brains to no avail, and, if asked, one could not say whether one goes on…

— W.G. Sebald

Writing must be a machine for breaking down, that is, allowing the now uncontrolled and uncontrollable reconstitutions of thoughts and expressions. All other kinds…

— Kathy Acker

“I have so little control over the act of writing that it's all I can do to remain conscious. Actual formal considerations are almost…

— David Rakoff

I feel like it's a really natural part of writing: You lose perspective, and you have to let it go sometimes in order to…

— Michelle Zauner