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.
People do not deserve to have good writing, they are so pleased with bad.
That's a very good way to learn the craft of writing — from reading.
Today we experience, in reverse, what pre-literate man faced with the advent of writing.
All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.
You write with ease to show your breeding,
But easy writing's curst hard reading.
The only end of writing is to enable the readers better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.
Writing and travel broaden your ass if not your mind and I like to write standing up.
There is only one way to make money at writing, and that is to marry a publisher's daughter.