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Writing Quotes

The page is led by Shakespeare, then William Zinsser, the author of On Writing Well, followed by Horace and Orwell. Three old sources are worth knowing: Bacon’s Meditationes Sacræ (1597) says reading makes a full man, conference a ready man and writing an exact man; Thoreau’s journal for 1838 says it is vain to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live; and Horace’s Ars Poetica is the source for the idea that the writer wins by mixing profit with pleasure.

“Writing is like sex. First you do it for love, then for your friends, then for money” is credited to Virginia Woolf and flagged misattributed. The notes quote an anecdote from a Tyrol coffee-house in which someone else says something similar. Two more flagged lines are credited to Cicero and to Menander.

Random quote on Writing

Most quoted on writing:

Give a kind word (with a kindly thought behind the word) — you will be kind and receive kind words.

W. Clement Stone

Someone watches over us when we write. Mother. Teacher. Shakespeare. God.

Martin Amis London Fields (1989)

I write to reach eternity.

James Jones

Our way is to honor every religion and every nation according to their paths, as it is written in the book of prophets: 'because every nation will go in the name of its lord.'

Shlomo Amar

After about forty centuries of oral civilisation, the Word is an inflated currency.

Jean Guitton

Words can hurt or soothe; we should all learn to use them better.

Paolo Crepet

Writing is a lonely way of life. You shut yourself up in your study and work and work.

Philip K. Dick Introduction to The Golden Man (1980)

"Is," "is." "is" — the idiocy of the word haunts me. If it were abolished, human thought might begin to make sense. I don't know what anything "is"; I only know how it seems to me at this moment.

Robert Anton Wilson

His words were simple words enough,
And yet he used them so,
That what in other mouths was rough
In his seemed musical and low.

James Russell Lowell Poems (1844)

I write about power, that's my real subject - how you get it, what you do with it, how you abuse it. I'm equally wary of liberals and conservatives.

Rene Balcer

Every word you wrote I ate, as if it were manna. Finding one's self in a book is a second birth; and you are the only one who knows that at times men behave like women and women like men, and that all these distinctions are mock distinctions.

Anaïs Nin Collages (1964)

Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, the melancholia, the panic fear which is inherent in the human condition.

Graham Greene

Morning has broken,
Like the first morning,
Blackbird has spoken
Like the first bird.
Praise for the singing!
Praise for the morning!
Praise for them springing
Fresh from the Word!

Eleanor Farjeon Morning Has Broken (1931)

Before Utu, I will not change my word.

Ishbi-Erra

"Dear Mrs., Mr., Miss, or Mr. And Mrs. Daneeka: Words cannot express the deep personal grief I experienced when your husband, son, father, or brother was killed, wounded, or reported missing in action."

Joseph Heller Catch-22 (1961)

If I want a word, I make it. I don't like combustion. It's too quiet. I have some stuff in a state of combustication.

Julius Sumner Miller

The core and the surface
Are essentially the same
Words making them seem different
Only to express appearance.
If name be needed, wonder names them both:
From wonder into wonder existence opens.

Witter Bynner

My final words are these:
As I fall I throw all on a high mountain peak -
Lo! All creation shatters; thus it is
That I destroy Zen doctrine.

Kogaku Soko

Belief in one’s identity as a poet or writer prior to the acid test of publication is as naive and harmless as the youthful belief in one’s immortality...and the inevitable disillusionment is just as painful.

Dan Simmons Hyperion (1989)

I didn’t feel well, but they told me I was well enough. They didn’t say in so many words that I was as well as I would ever be, but that was the implication.

Samuel Beckett The End (1946)

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