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.
'Tis a word that's quickly spoken,
Which being restrained, a heart is broken.
Much of writing might be described as mental pregnancy with successive difficult deliveries.
A poet should leave traces of his passage, not proofs. Traces alone engender dreams.
For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: “It might have been!”
A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.
A very great part of the mischiefs that vex this world arises from words.
Words, words, mere words, no matter from the heart; Th' effect doth operate another way.
Without knowing the force of words, it is impossible to know men.
At this every lady drew up her mouth as if going to pronounce the letter P.