Writing obscures language ; it is not a guise for language but a disguise.
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.
“Writing fiction is the love of my life. It's the thing that I think gives me meaning.”
Writing is a desperate attempt to extract some dignity – and a modicum of money – from solitude.
Poverty is what I am writing about, and I had my first contact with poverty in this slum.
His writing could be classified as metajournalism, journalism about the process of journalism.
Writing is hard work. The fact that I love doing it doesn't make it less hard work.
The profession of book-writing makes horse-racing seem like a solid, stable business.
I happen to have a very bad fit of the tooth-ache at the time I am writing this.