Art is a line around your thoughts. — Gustav Klimt
Art is a refining and evocative translation of the materials of the world. — Gwendolyn Brooks
writing is a labor of love and also an act of defiance, a way to light a candle in a gale wind. — Alice Childress
There is one art of which people should be masters - the art of reflection. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Writing is nature's way of letting you know how sloppy your thinking is. — Dick Guindon
Art is choosing to do something skillfully, caring about the details, bringing all of yourself to make the finest work you can. It is beyond ego, vanity, self-glorification, and need for approval. — Rick Rubin
Indeed, learning to write may be part of learning to read. For all I know, writing comes out of a superior devotion to reading. — Eudora Welty
What Is Writing Quotes
What I try to do is write. I may write for two weeks ‘the cat sat on the mat, that is that, not a rat,’.... And it might be just the most boring and awful stuff. But I try. When I’m writing, I write. And then it’s as if the muse is convinced that I’m serious and says, ‘Okay. Okay. I’ll come. — Maya Angelou
If you knew when you began a book what you would say at the end, do you think that you would have the courage to write it? What is true for writing and for a love relationship is true also for life. The game is worthwhile insofar as we don't know what will be the end. — Michel Foucault
If someone writes a great story, people praise the author, not the pen. People don't say, 'Oh what an incredible pen...where can I get a pen like this so I can write great stories?' Well, I am just a pen in the hands of the Lord. He is the author. All praise should go to him. — Keith Green
There comes a point in your life when you need to stop reading other people's book and write your own.
The problem in society is not kids not knowing science. The problem is adults not knowing science. They outnumber kids 5 to 1, they wield power, they write legislation. When you have scientifically illiterate adults, you have undermined the very fabric of what makes a nation wealthy and strong. — Neil deGrasse Tyson
All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think, we become. — Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
There's a story everywhere. Being bored to death someplace is basically a funny proposition. What you have to watch out for is you don't write a boring story about a boring place. — Tim Cahill
You're a work of art. Not everyone will understand you, but the ones who do, will never forget about you.
The victimization of children is nowhere forbidden; what is forbidden is to write about it. — Alice Miller
For an author to write as he speaks is just as reprehensible as the opposite fault, to speak as he writes; for this gives a pedantic effect to what he says, and at the same time makes him hardly intelligible. — Arthur Schopenhauer
I write the lyrics based on what is going on in my life - I'm not going to write about the old hair metal stuff, like castles and stuff. — Oliver Sykes
In the book of life every page has two sides: we human beings fill the upper side with our plans, hopes and wishes, but providence writes on the other side, and what it ordains is seldom our goal. — Nisami
Teaching Writing Quotes
Between rounds of speed chess I read enough of a programming manual to teach myself to write programs on the school's DEC mainframe in the language Basic. — Eric Allin Cornell
I have devoted my energies to the study of the scriptures, observing monastic discipline, and singing the daily services in church; study, teaching, and writing have always been my delight. — Venerable Bede
You cannot teach creativity - how to become a good writer. But you can help a young writer discover within himself what kind of writer he would like to be. — Mario Vargas Llosa
Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing about.
It took me about three years to write About Grace. I wasn't teaching two of those years, so I was working eight-hour days, five days a week. And it would include research and reading - it wasn't just a blank page, laying down words. — Anthony Doerr
James Franco, acting, teaching, directing, writing, producing, photography, soundtracks, editing - is there anything you can do? — Natasha Leggero
Teach your students real-world writing purposes, add a teacher who models his or her struggles with the writing process, throw in lots of real-world mentor texts for students to emulate, and give our kids the time necessary to enable them to stretch as writers. — Kelly Gallagher
Until the lion learns to write, every story will glorify the hunter.
It's very hard to teach someone how to write a song if to begin with there's no creative crop to harvest. — Barry Mann
Children do not learn in school; they are babysat. It takes maybe 50 hours to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic. After that, students can teach themselves. Mainly what school does is to keep the children off the streets and out of the job market. — John Taylor Gatto
If you are not a writer, you will not understand the difficulties of writing. If you are not a writer, you will not know the fears and hopes of the writers you teach. — Mem Fox
For the writer, the serial killer is, abstractly, an analogue of the imagination's caprices and amorality; the sense that, no matter the dictates and even the wishes of the conscious social self, the life or will or purpose of the imagination is incomprehensible, unpredictable. — Joyce Carol Oates
Plot is people. Human emotions and desires founded on the realities of life, working at cross purposes, getting hotter and fiercer as they strike against each other until finally there's an explosion-that's Plot. — Leigh Brackett
The purpose of writing is to inflate weak ideas, obscure pure reasoning, and inhibit clarity. With a little practice, writing can be an intimidating and impenetrable fog! — Bill Watterson
The art of knowing is knowing what to ignore.
What is the purpose of writing? For me personally, it is really to explain the mystery of life, and the mystery of life includes, of course, the personal, the political, the forces that make us what we are while there's another force from inside battling to make us something else. — Nadine Gordimer
I write for one and only one purpose, to overcome the invincible ignorance of the traduced heart. I wish to speak to and for those who have had enough of the Social Lie, the Economics of Mass Murder, the Sexual Hoax, and the Domestication of Conspicuous Consumption. — Kenneth Rexroth
No blur of inexactness, no cloud of vagueness, is allowable in good writing; from the first seeing to the last putting down, there must be steady lucidity and uncompromise of purpose. — Eudora Welty
Write hard and clear about what hurts.
Today, everything I do from morning meditation on - eating breakfast, going for a walk, writing, reading, even recreation - is governed by one purpose only: how to give the very best account of my life that I can in the service of all. — Eknath Easwaran
The purpose of writing is to hold a mirror to nature, but too much today is written from small mirrors in vanity cases. — John Mason Brown
Thus, from admiration of one wise and innocent child, and from a misheard remark, the process that not even Aristotle could codify was triggered. Where do you get your ideas? I purposely mishear things. — Harlan Ellison
Making of poetry, music, dance and art as culture-making in the service of nation-making. You can find writings that make that purpose for art quite explicit. — Mark McMorris
Creativity And Writing Quotes
Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist. — Pablo Picasso
And after about two years, I realized that creative writing was not going to help you ace those biological tests. So I switched over to journalism. I didn't graduate with honors, but I did graduate on time and with some doing. — Bob Schieffer
Youth is the gift of nature, but age is a work of art.
Fantasy is hardly an escape from reality. It's a way of understanding it. — Lloyd Alexander
Composing is a natural fit. As far as the creative process goes, I'd rather do this than anything else, by far. Something different happened to me when I started to write music to images. It was a feeling of excitement and connection and a sense of being in the right place that I never had before. — James Newton Howard
Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. — Barbara Kingsolver
Like most-maybe all- writers, I learned to write by writing and, by example, by reading books. — Francine Prose
I’m inspired by life, and all sorts of things. You could say something right now and it would inspire me to write a song. — Jay-Z
Becoming a writer means being creative enough to find the time and the place in your life for writing. — Heather Sellers
No author dislikes to be edited as much as he dislikes not to be published. — Russell Lynes
Writing Well Quotes
We need to have music that contributes to the well-being of the spirit. Music that cradles people's lives and makes things a little easier. That's what I try to do, and what I want to do. You don't want to close the door on hope. — Merle Haggard
To write well and speak well is mere vanity if one does not live well. — Bridget of Sweden
There are a couple of carp fishing books I've been reading. I'm very interested in that line of books, because I think they write very well, carp anglers, about the general environment. — Tom Felton
Before you go to bed, write down three 'gratefuls' for the day and three 'did wells' (they can even include something as simple as doing the laundry)-the results can be amazing! — Carol Burnett
Silk Road to Ruin has all the analysis and it's structured very well. I rely on my notes more and I use direct quotes. But there's nothing like writing about it right away. — Ted Rall
Without dignity our lives are only blinks of duration. But if we manage to lead a good life well, we create something more. We write a subscript to our mortality. We make our lives tiny diamonds in the cosmic sands. — Ronald Dworkin
Well, I always say that the two things I was most disastrous at in my life, being a teenager and being a wife, were the two things I really wound up cashing in on when I was writing fluffy magazine pieces. — Ann Patchett
I say, 'If I had a serious brain injury I might well write a children's book', but otherwise the idea of being conscious of who you're directing the story to is anathema to me, because, in my view, fiction is freedom and any restraints on that are intolerable. — Martin Amis
Well, when I am fifty-three or so I would like to write a novel as good as Persuasion but with a modern setting, of course. For the next thirty years or so I shall be collecting material for it. If anyone asks me what I work at, I shall say, 'Collecting material'. No one can object to that. — Stella Gibbons
Ugh! How many stories about love, copulation, marriage and death already exist, not one of which tells the truth! How sick I am of well-constructed plots and brilliant writing! — Sadegh Hedayat
English Writing Quotes
Good English, well spoken and well written will open more doors than a college degree... Bad English will slam doors you don't even know exist. — William Raspberry
I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English - it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don't let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in. — Mark Twain
All the youth now in England of free men, who are rich enough to be able to devote themselves to it, be set to learn as long as they are not fit for any other occupation, until they are able to read English writing well. — Alfred the Great
No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. — Ernest Hemingway
I am an English major in school with an emphasis in creative writing. I think hearing Maya Angelou speak at school last year was one of the best moments Stanford, at least, intellectually, had to offer. — Fred Savage
We who write in English are fortunate to have the richest and most versatile language in the world. Respect it. — P. D. James
Write. Don't talk about writing. Don't tell me about your wonderful story ideas. Don't give me a bunch of "somedays." Plant your ass and scribble, type, keyboard. If you have any talent at all, it will leak out despite your failure to pay attention in English. — Glen Cook
I cannot write in English, because of the treacherous spelling. When I am reading, I only hear it and am unable to remember what the written word looks like. — Albert Einstein
You never know what's going to happen. My mother was an English teacher. If someone had told her that I was going to write a book, she would never have believed that. So you can never say never. — Tony Dungy
Writing Words Quotes
Music expresses that which cannot be put into words. — Victor Hugo
Words are the most powerful thing in the universe... Words are containers. They contain faith, or fear, and they produce after their kind. — Charles Capps
I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions. — James A. Michener
Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly -- they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced. — Aldous Huxley
Good authors, too, who once knew better words now only use four-letter words writing prose... anything goes. — Cole Porter
I write from my knowledge not my lack, from my strength not my weakness. I am not interested if anyone knows whether or not I am familiar with big words, I am interested in trying to render big ideas in a simple way. I am interested in being understood not admired. — Lucille Clifton
One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple. — Jack Kerouac
I have always wanted to write a book that ended with the word 'mayonnaise. — Richard Brautigan
When you write a song, most of the words you use are in black and white, and then, from time to time, you use one that’s in color. These words in color are a part of ourselves, because we give them a meaning. If you like, we give them a third dimension. — Jacques Brel
You know that I write slowly. This is chiefly because I am never satisfied until I have said as much as possible in a few words, and writing briefly takes far more time than writing at length. — Carl Friedrich Gauss
Creative Writing Quotes
Cooking is like painting or writing a song. Just as there are only so many notes or colors, there are only so many flavors - it's how you combine them that sets you apart. — Sayings
I would, however, start writing fiction about 10 years before I actually did, because it's such great fun to do, many times more creative than nonfiction. — Judith Krantz
Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college. — Kurt Vonnegut
I am often asked why I started to write poetry. The answer is that my motivation sprang from a visceral need to creatively articulate the experiences of the black youth of my generation, coming of age in a racist society. — Linton Kwesi Johnson
The Polar Express was the easiest of my picture book manuscripts to write... Once I realized the train was going to the North Pole, finding the story seemed less like a creative effort than an act of recollection. I felt, like the storys narrator, that I was remembering something, not making it up. — Chris Van Allsburg
Creativity is not a talent. It is a way of operating. — John Cleese
One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones form themselves into the proper pattern at the right moment. — Hart Crane
I'd rather be caught holding up a bank than stealing so much as a two-word phrase from another writer. — Jack Smith
I don't believe anything I write or say. I regard belief as a form of brain damage, the death of intelligence, the fracture of creativity, the atrophy of imagination. I have opinions but no Belief System (B.S.) — Robert Anton Wilson
Style has always been in my mind the author's Self, the creative expression of that Self. — Whit Burnett
Writing Life Quotes
You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish. I have no responsibility to be like they expect me to be. It's their mistake, not my failing. — Richard P. Feynman
Real poetry, is to lead a beautiful life. To live poetry is better than to write it. — Matsuo Basho
I write ... in order to help ensure that the teeming millions in the New World, for whose sins Christ gave His life, do not continue to die in ignorance, but rather are brought to knowledge of God and thereby saved. — Bartolome de las Casas
I am the author of my life. Unfortunately, I am writing in pen and can’t erase my mistakes. — Bill Kaulitz
To gain your own voice you have to forget about having it heard. — Allen Ginsberg
I think that every decision I make in my life is based off of an emotion - and it definitely hurts me in some situations, and helps in some situations, like obviously writing and stuff is my favourite thing to do because I get to use all of my emotions and express them in that way. — Melanie Martinez
She would smile and show no surprise, convinced as she was, the same as I, that casual meetings are apt to be just the opposite, and that people who make dates are the same kind who need lines on their writing paper, or who always squeeze up from the bottom on a tube of toothpaste. — Julio Cortazar
There comes a point in your life when you need to stop reading other people's books and write your own. — Albert Einstein
You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing and dance, and write poems, and suffer, and understand, for all that is life. — Jiddu Krishnamurti
You only pass through this life once, you don't come back for an encore. — Elvis Presley
Speech And Writing Quotes
In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible... Thus, political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging, and sheer cloudy vagueness... Political language [is] designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable. — George Orwell
Threats to freedom of speech, writing and action, though often trivial in isolation, are cumulative in their effect and, unless checked, lead to a general disrespect for the rights of the citizen. — George Orwell
Anarchists prepare for social revolution and use every means - speech, writing, or deed, whichever is more to the point; to accelerate revolutionary development. — Johann Most
I live in America. I have the right to write whatever I want. And it's equaled by another right just as powerful: the right not to read it. Freedom of speech includes the freedom to offend people. — Brad Thor
Today's public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books, and there is some evidence that they can't read them either. — Gore Vidal
I try to write in plain brown blocks of American speech but occasionally set in an ancient word or a strange word just to startle the reader a little bit and to break up the monotony of the plain American cadence. — James Laughlin
In our time political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. — George Orwell
To write is to make oneself the echo of what cannot cease speaking -- and since it cannot, in order to become its echo I have, in a way, to silence it. I bring to this incessant speech the decisiveness, the authority of my own silence. — Maurice Blanchot
Writing for me is a dragnet that carries everything away with it: expressions and figures of speech, postures, feelings, thoughts, troubles. In short, the lives of others. — Elena Ferrante
A letter is always better than a phone call. People write things in letters they would never say in person. They permit themselves to write down feelings and observations using emotional syntax far more intimate and powerful than speech will allow. — Alice Steinbach
I cannot write in verse, for I am no poet. I cannot arrange the parts of speech with such art as to produce effects of light and shade, for I am no painter. Even by signs and gestures I cannot express my thoughts and feelings, for I am no dancer. But I can do so by means of sounds, for I am a musician. — Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Here in Manto's own words that he wanted to mark his grave with: "In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful Here lies Saadat Hasan Manto and with him lie buried all the secrets and mysteries of the art of short-story writing.... Under tons of earth he lies, still wondering who among the two is greater short-story writer: God or He. — Saadat Hasan Manto
The case for bitcoin as a cash item on a balance sheet is very compelling for anyone with a time horizon extending beyond four years. Whether or not fiat authorities like it, bitcoin is now in free-market competition with many other assets for the world’s cash balances. It is a competition bitcoin will win or lose in the market, not by the edicts of economists, politicians, or bureaucrats. If it continues to capture a growing share of the world’s cash balances, it continues to succeed. As it stands, bitcoin’s role as cash has a very large total addressable market. The world has around $90 trillion of broad fiat money supply, $90 trillion of sovereign bonds, $40 trillion of corporate bonds, and $10 trillion of gold. Bitcoin could replace all of these assets on balance sheets, which would be a total addressable market cap of $230 trillion. At the time of writing, bitcoin’s market capitalization is around $700 billion, or around 0.3% of its total addressable market. Bitcoin could also take a share of the market capitalization of other semihard assets which people have resorted to using as a form of saving for the future. These include stocks, which are valued at around $90 trillion; global real estate, valued at $280 trillion; and the art market, valued at several trillion dollars. Investors will continue to demand stocks, houses, and works of art, but the current valuations of these assets are likely highly inflated by the need of their holders to use them as stores of value on top of their value as capital or consumer goods. In other words, the flight from inflationary fiat has distorted the U.S. dollar valuations of these assets beyond any sane level. As more and more investors in search of a store of value discover bitcoin’s superior intertemporal salability, it will continue to acquire an increasing share of global cash balances. — Saifedean Ammous
I think young writers should get other degrees first, social sciences, arts degrees or even business degrees. What you learn is research skills, a necessity because a lot of writing is about trying to find information. — Irvine Welsh
In no way am I demeaning writing or any other form of art because it's popular. What I'm saying is that anything fed into the industrial machinery to comply with rules of size and length and shelf-life has a hard time surviving as art. — Alberto Manguel
The only way to get change is not through the courts or - heaven forbid - the politicians, but through a change of human consciousness and through a change of heart. Only through the arts - music, poetry, dance, painting, writing - "can we really reach each other. — Leslie Marmon Silko
It has taken me years of struggle, hard work and research to learn to make one simple gesture, and I know enough about the art of writing to realize that it would take as many years of concentrated effort to write one simple, beautiful sentence. — Isadora Duncan
When I first started writing plays I couldn't write good dialogue because I didn't respect how black people talked. I thought that in order to make art out of their dialogue I had to change it, make it into something different. Once I learned to value and respect my characters, I could really hear them. I let them start talking. — August Wilson
The first step - especially for young people with energy and drive and talent, but not money - the first step to controlling your world is to control your culture. To model and demonstrate the kind of world you demand to live in. To write the books. Make the music. Shoot the films. Paint the art. — Chuck Palahniuk
I realized how valuable the art and practice of writing letters are, and how important it is to remind people of what a treasure letters--handwritten letters--can be. In our throwaway era of quick phone calls, faxes, and email, it's all to easy never to find the time to write letters. That's a great pity--for historians and the rest of us. — Nancy Reagan
Those of us who work in the arts know that depiction is not endorsement. If it was, no artist would be able to paint inhumane practices, no author could write about them, and no filmmaker could delve into the thorny subjects of our time. — Kathryn Bigelow
I would love to spend all my time writing to you; I'd love to share with you all that goes through my mind, all that weighs on my heart, all that gives air to my soul; phantoms of art, dreams that would be so beautiful if they could come true. — Luigi Pirandello
I remind myself Vincent van Gogh died without having sold a single painting. Like, art is not measured by the trappings that people attached to it. It's the thing itself, and so, as you know, it's been a dream of mine to write songs for Disney, and so, it's really exciting to finally hear. It's two and a half years. — Lin-Manuel Miranda
I don't care about truth; I care about art and style and writing and occupying the wall. For me, my writing style is very linked to the fact that it is a work of art on the wall. I had to find a way to write in concise, effective phrases that people standing or walking into a room could read. — Sophie Calle
I'd say art is with you. All around you. I'd say when there doesn't seem to be anyone else, there is art. I'd say you can love art how you wish to be loved. And I'd say art is a lifeline to the rest of us - we are out here. You are not alone. There is nothing about you that scares us. There is nothing unlovable about you, either. — Lidia Yuknavitch
The art of the dramatist is very like the art of the architect. A plot has to be built up just as a house is built-story after story; and no edifice has any chance of standing unless it has a broad foundation and a solid frame. — Brander Matthews
There are so many opportunities in life, that the loss of two or three capabilities is not necessarily debilitating. A handicap can give you the opportunity to focus more on art, writing, or music. — Jim Davis
But really, it was reading that led me to writing. And in particular, reading the American classics like Twain who taught me at an early age that ordinary lives of ordinary people can be made into high art. — Russell Banks
The truth is, the way you write music, it's a code. It has to be very precise. It's scientific, but ultimately it also depends on interpretation. It's very similar to how you grow a master plan: it's an objective document, but at the same time it is a lyrical document which allows through interpretation to become a harmonious work of art. — Daniel Libeskind
Achilles exists only through Homer . Take away the art of writing from this world , and you will probably take away its glory . — François-René de Chateaubriand
Where the people are well educated, the art of piloting a state is best learned from the writings of Plato. — George Berkeley
When you're actually making a film, it's just people on your back all the time wanting stuff and you're constantly having to it deal with them. It's probably the most time consuming of all the arts, but I do love it because it is a great mix of visual art and music and writing. — Taika Waititi
The ancient codes were doubtless originally suggested by the discovery and diffusion of the art of writing. — Henry James Sumner Maine
The art of writing is to explain the complications of the human soul with the simplicity that can be universally understood. — Alan Sillitoe
What can a pencil do for all of us? Amazing things. It can write transcendent poetry, uplifting music, or life-changing equations; it can sketch the future, give life to untold beauty, and communicate the full-force of our love and aspirations. — Adam Braun
I have rewritten — often several times — every word I have ever published. My pencils outlast their erasers. — Vladimir Nabokov
To string incongruities and absurdities together in a wandering and sometimes purposeless way, and seem innocently unaware that they are absurdities, is the basis of the American art, if my position is correct. — Mark Twain
The real self of an artiste lies in art, so when an artiste performs, all the pain, trauma and tension get released through art, be it dancing, painting, singing, writing or even martial arts. — Mrinalini Sarabhai
Encouraging young people to believe in themselves and find their own voice whether it's through writing, drama or art is so important in giving young people a sense of self-worth. — Michael Morpurgo
It is quite beneath the dignity of a person holding a Bachelor of Arts degree to engage in such a vulgar occupation as the writing of novels. — Fukuzawa Yukichi
Earning money is not the sole objective of life or education. A community of any quality should have a whole range of skills and interests. They should paint, write, perform, visit art galleries and enjoy world-class concerts. Only then will they form a vibrant, rounded, interesting community. — Goh Chok Tong
Writing is truly a creative art - putting word to a blank piece of paper and ending up with a full-fledged story rife with character and plot. — William Shatner
In Conclusion
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