Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assault of thoughts on the unthinking.
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.
Every writer is a frustrated actor who recites his lines in the hidden auditorium of his skull.
It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by.
True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
As those move easiest who have learn'd to dance.
When we desire to confine our words, we commonly say they are spoken under the rose.
How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.
Words of affection, howsoe'er express'd,
The latest spoken still are deem'd the best.
Words are like leaves; and where they most abound, much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found.
Language is texture of images and music. We speak in images and rhythm, by taking help of words.
The original writer is not one who imitates nobody, but one whom nobody can imitate.