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.
"I grew up listening to stories before I ever imagined writing them."
"I love to write in a funny way even when I am writing about serious matters."
Given that he was writing in the late eighteenth century, I like to cut him slack.
My own writing was born in Algeria out of a lost country of the dead father and the foreign mother.
The worst is when you can’t think where to go in your writing, and an idea won’t get written.
There is no money in writing, the only reward you get is fame.
I am thrilled to be writing a report on such a delicate subject as trousers [...]
In writing a book, the last thing that one learns is to know what to put first.
I made up my mind long ago to follow one cardinal rule in all my writing — to be clear.