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.
The words you've bandied are sufficient;
'Tis deeds that I prefer to see.
I've half a mind to tumble down to prose,
But verse is more in fashion—so here goes!
Madam, you have bereft me of all words,
Only my blood speaks to you in my veins.
Deep in my heart subsides the infrequent word,
And there dies slowly throbbing like a wounded bird.
I think writing, my writing, is a species of mediumship. I become the person.