My writing is a combination of three elements. The first is travel: not travel like a tourist, but travel as exploration. The second is reading literature on the subject. The third is reflection. — Ryszard Kapuscinski
Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go. — E. L. Doctorow
Writing and rewriting are a constant search for what it is one is saying. — John Updike
You need to know a little about a lot to write a book. The amount of research that goes into it- it's just not the ideas that come out of your head. You need to have specifics and 80,000 words. — James Murray
Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man. — Francis Bacon
One writer, for instance, excels at a plan or a title page, another works away at the body of the book, and a third is a dab at an index. — Oliver Goldsmith
Writing is the art of applying the ass to the seat. — Dorothy Parker
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
The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe. — David Hare
I went to college, but I learned to write by reading - and writing. — Daniel Pinkwater
Dreaming and hoping won't produce a piece of work; only writing, rewriting and rewriting (if necessary)- a devoted translation of thoughts and dreams into words on paper will result in a story. — Roberta Gellis
For me, a play is a form of writing which isn't complete until it is interpreted by actors. But it's still a form of writing. And so most of my time is spent thinking about how to write a sentence. — Wallace Shawn
Write about what you know and care deeply about. When one puts one's self on paper - that is what is called good writing. — Joel Chandler Harris
To create great work, here's how you must spend your time:
1% Inspiration
9% Perspiration
90% Justification — George Lois
Writing should be an adventure, shrouded in mystery and uncertainty, blessed with amazing grace. In theory, of course — Syd Field
I'm working on a nonfiction book on Nepal and a novel about diasporas. — Louise Brown
I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paperwork. — Peter De Vries
The elasticity of imagination and compassion is what writing and reading promote. — Julia Alvarez
The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair. — Mary Heaton Vorse
Research And Writing Image Quotes
There comes a point in your life when you need to stop reading other people's book and write your own.
Research Writing Quotes
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
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
I could write historical fiction, or science fiction, or a mystery but since I find it fascinating to research the clues of some little know period and develop a story based on that, I will probably continue to do it. — Jean M. Auel
Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing about.
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
I went to the trash pile at Tuskegee Institute and started my laboratory with bottles, old fruit jars and any other thing I found I could use. ... [The early efforts were] worked out almost wholly on top of my flat topped writing desk and with teacups, glasses, bottles and reagents I made myself. — George Washington Carver
The title which I most covet is that of teacher. The writing of a research paper and the teaching of freshman calculus, and everything in between, falls under this rubric. Happy is the person who comes to understand something and then gets to explain it. — Marshall A. Cohen
Until the lion learns to write, every story will glorify the hunter.
Writing nonfiction is more like sculpture, a matter of shaping the research into the finished thing. — Joan Didion
While I was writing Wild Swans I thought the famine was the result of economic mismanagement but during the research I realised that it was something more sinister. — Jung Chang
Planning to write is not writing. Outlining, researching, talking to people about what you're doing, none of that is writing. Writing is writing. — E. L. Doctorow
Here I was into astronomy, and here into anthropology, and there I go into geology. It was much more fun to be able to research and write about whatever I wanted to. — Octavia Butler
Childhood is not a race to see how quickly a child can read, write and count. It is a small window of time to learn and develop at the pace that is right for each individual child. Earlier is not better. — Magda Gerber
I decided to write the book to open the eyes of the people of how corrupt John D. Rockefeller company was and the unfair ways he used to be successful. I wanted the people to know the truth about the Standard Oil Company. — Ida Tarbell
Write hard and clear about what hurts.
I think segregation is bad, I think it's wrong, it's immoral. I'd fight against it with every breath in my body, but you don't need to sit next to a white person to learn how to read and write. The NAACP needs to say that. — Clarence Thomas
I am 55 years old now. It takes three years to write one book. I don't know how many books I will be able to write before I die. It is like a countdown. So with each book I am praying - please let me live until I am finished. — Haruki Murakami
I don’t write to make investing easy. I write to show how hard it is so that people won’t try tricks that they can’t do. — Howard Marks
Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.
Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation. — Graham Greene
Talking of Pleasure, this moment I was writing with one hand, and with the other holding to my Mouth a Nectarine - how good how fine. It went down all pulpy, slushy, oozy, all its delicious embonpoint melted down my throat like a large, beatified Strawberry. — John Keats
You remember how you were taught to write. Your mother put a pencil in your hand, took your hand in hers, and began to move it. Since you did not know at all what she meant to do, you left your hand completely free in hers. This is like the power of God in our lives. — Anthony of Sourozh
And I've always loved commercials. I like working out how to organically weave a brand's message into the writing process. It's like an improv show, where comics ask the audience to throw out a word and a skit is built around it. — Jason Bateman
Researching Quotes
The great question that has never been answered, and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is 'What does a woman want?' — Sigmund Freud
To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research. — Steven Wright
I'm a big skeptic so I won't just go off what an individual may tell me. I gotta do the research. I'ma get different literature on that one subject and just compare and contrast. I do my own selective studies. — Kevin Gates
Your life is your story. Write well. Edit often.
What is desired is that the teacher ceased being a lecturer, satisfied with transmitting ready-made solutions. His role should rather be that of a mentor stimulating initiative and research. — Jean Piaget
Basic research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing. — Wernher Von Braun
Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose. — Zora Neale Hurston
A good friend knows all your stories. A best friend helped you write them.
When I started this run, I said that if we all gave one dollar, we’d have $22 million for cancer research, and I don’t care man, there’s no reason that isn’t possible. No reason! — Terry Fox
If you steal from one author, it's plagiarism; if you steal from many, it's research. — Wilson Mizner
For twenty years, my research has shown that the view you adopt for yourself profoundly affects the way you lead your life. It can determine whether you become the person you want to be and whether you accomplish the things you value. — Carol S. Dweck
If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it? — Albert Einstein
Africans and persons of African descent must assume the primary responsibility and leadership in historical research....if we are to continue to leave practically all important historical research and writing concerning the black race to the white man, then we must be prepared to accept, uncomplainingly, the white man's point of view. — Chancellor Williams
I am asking you all not to be nettled with me for not answering your letter in spanish I read spanish very well but I don't write it. The image of Stanley Dixon sitting and pondering is one of the rewards of sea turtle research, and a thing I shall often sit and ponder. — Archie Carr
I was invited by a publisher to write the text for Tantra.[1] Having done some research, what fascinated me was the evidence that many 'tantric' ideas actually came to India from the Mediterranean. It is rather a dry read and debunks reports of orgies and sexual mischief – sorry to disappoint. — Indra Sinha
Adam Berenson knows how to compose, organize an ensemble, do musical research, play solo and trio piano, write for musical journals, and enlist others to his cause. A very fine musician. — Paul Bley
I enjoy research; in fact research is so engaging that it would be easy to go on for years, and never write the novel at all. — Helen Dunmore
I spend eight months outlining and researching the novel before I begin to write a single word of the prose. — Jeffery Deaver
I spend 60 hours a week on my business but I don't work for a minute. Work is hard. But what I do - writing, speaking, researching, learning, and sharing information - is pure joy. It's what I was called to do. — Carmine Gallo
I have to do more close research and fact checking for the science fiction. This is not however to say that writing good fantasy does not involve doing good research. — Sarah Zettel
I don't think that if I had spent the time that I was in, say, Belgrade, writing about my time in Trieste, which is where I had just been, that would have been productive. I told myself: take extensive notes while you're there, do the research part of it, and then pray, pray, the muses will be available when the actual 'ready' happens. — Jessa Crispin
A book is not only written - after it's finished it starts writing you, the writer. You become its notebook, its sheet of paper on which it forces you to think and rethink your original ideas, your topics, your research, actually everything. — Sasa Stanisic
For me, the historical and genealogical library is the one I use. I'm working on, I'll say, it's a time travel novel. I haven't written very much of it. That's the dirty secret of the Cullman center: The writers don't write their fiction there, they just do their research. — Andrew Sean Greer
Research and writing are lonely occupations. It is easy to become discouraged in solitary confinement. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
I have been very afraid of writing about other cultures and countries. I've been worried about getting the research wrong. I ask a lot of questions. I try to visit the area. If I'm not able to do that, I search out people from that country who live elsewhere and ask questions. — Uwem Akpan
See, I have no journalism in my background, so I wasn't practised at research or writing non-fiction, nor at handling the truth in a journalistic way. Journalists know when to call a halt and write something, but I kept on looking for answers. — John Thomas Sladek
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
It takes me three months of research and nine months of work to produce a book. When I start writing, I do two pages a day; if I'm gonna do 320, that's 160 days. — Alan Furst
Becoming Richard Pryor is a compulsively readable book that sets a new gold standard for American biography. Scott Scaul's research is extraordinary; his writing is taut, elegant, and insightful; and he captures both the hilarity and pain that made Richard Pryor such a towering figure. — Debby Applegate
Nightclub City tells the behind-the-scenes story of Manhattan's glamorous nightlife at its peak. Packed with colorful characters, terrific original research, and an unusually accessible writing style, Nightclub City is a gritty social history of America's most glitzy fantasies. — Debby Applegate
Somebody said writing is easy, you just sit down at your typewriter and open a vein. It depends on the book. Some, I have to do quite a lot of research, which I like. Others are much closer to me. — Anne Rivers Siddons
Now I'm writing about contemporary Los Angeles from memory. My process was to hang out, observe, research what I was writing about, and almost immediately go back to my office and write those sections. So it was a very close transfer between observation and writing. — Michael Connelly
One book at a time... though I'm usually doing the research for others while I'm writing, but that sort of research is fairly desultory and I like to stick to the book being written - and writing a book concentrates the mind so the research is more productive. — Bernard Cornwell
I don't believe in writing anything that I don't know about or haven't researched about personally. I like to transport the reader to places, and in order to do that I have to do the research. — Jackie Collins
I thought my life was mapped out. Research, living in the forest, teaching and writing. But in '86 I went to a conference and realised the chimpanzees were disappearing. I had worldwide recognition and a gift of communication. I had to use them. — Jane Goodall
I was inspired to spend an entire year - my 65th year - reading, researching, and meditating on Lao-tzu's messages, practicing them and ultimately writing down these insights as I felt Lao-tzu wanted us to know them. — Wayne Dyer
When you're researching things that have happened, the clear narrative arc is not there already. This is the problem of writing nonfiction for me - writing nonfiction which is about serious subjects and has serious political and social points to make, yet which is meant to be popular to a degree - what happens when the facts don't fit a convenient narrative arc? I guess that for a lot of nonfiction writers that is a central challenge. — Misha Glenny
I love researching, whether it's old Western documentaries or old Western country singers or John Ford Westerns, which are heavily influenced by family values, which so many of these country songs are related to. I'm having a good time doing that, and writing some treatments and hoping to bring a new style of music video to the country genre, that is starting to become very poppy. — Clifton Collins, Jr.
I'm a fan of Ernest Hemingway work and specifically The Old Man and the Sea. I researched the relationship he had with the captain of his boat for 20 years, Gregorio Fuentes, and that inspired me to write a screenplay about it. — Andy Garcia
Each genre has its own process. I'm very intuitive about poetry. I usually write first and second drafts out by hand. The other end of the spectrum is journalism, which is much more cerebral, more thought-out and planned. Fiction lies somewhere in between. I usually start intuitively but eventually I need to stop and consider structure, or research, or both. — Achy Obejas
If I didn't write in my journal every couple of days, I felt like I was going to burst. Later I learned the research about how important journaling can be to recovering from trauma and grief. That was definitely true for me. — Sheryl Sandberg
I was able to study 50 years of leadership theory and practicum in my master's program at Seton Hall, and it has provided the backbone of the knowledge we use every day. My undergraduate work was in journalism, and my early work as a newspaper reporter taught me how to research, write, and rewrite. — Adrian Gostick
I research, write, travel and teach. I rarely arrange for spare time. If we do not fill our days with high priority actions they will fill with low priority actions. I would prefer to live my life according to my highest priorities and do what I love, which again is research, write, travel and teach. It is my mission and calling. It is what inspires me. It is my destiny. — John Frederick Demartini
I primarily write nonfiction. Research, reflection, and spending time with ideas are important to me. So, this is how I spend most of my time writing - in thought. — Adam Morris
About writing I learned that always, always, always it's necessary to haunt your settings. I'm a big researcher. All my fiction is based on tons of digging. But the vital importance of actually traveling to the settings of a novel really hit me. And it's not just the setting details, not just the visuals and other sensory data, that will pop. You'll find surprising clues that swerve your story in whole new, deeper, surprising, more organic ways. — Lucy Jane Bledsoe
As someone who writes novels that are often set in other periods of time or other ages or other landscapes, there's a certain element of research I have to do, and often, the more laconic people are, the more interesting they become. — Michael Ondaatje
Discovery still happens in the writing. You start in nonfiction with a whole lot more going for you, because all the discovery isn't waiting to be made. You've made some of it in the research. As you get deeper into a piece and do more research, the notes are in the direction of the piece - you're actually writing it. — Joan Didion
There are 20,000 million books I could have to read, but I can pick the ones and know that I'm learning something that I didn't know before. That's the glory of writing. It's not even so much the writing, it's what you learn - especially history - because so much of it is research. — Doris Kearns Goodwin
My motto is: write about anything you bloody well like; just make sure you do it effectively. We've all had all the emotions, the rest is research and that leap which some can do and others cannot - it's not really something you can learn, otherwise all academics of literature would be wonderful fiction writers. — Suhayl Saadi
There's a huge amount of work on Adam and Eve, from the ancient world to the present. Saint Augustine was obsessed with them.I don't know if it helps my research, but I get a big kick out of Mark Twain, who wrote "The Diaries of Adam and Eve." He wrote very funny stuff on them. I sometimes read things that are loosely related to what I'm thinking and writing about. — Stephen Greenblatt
In Conclusion
Which quotation resonated with you best? Did you enjoy our collection of research and writing quotes? Or may be you have a slogan about research and writing to suggest. Let us know using our contact form.
Citation
Feel free to cite and use any of the quotes in this collection of research and writing quotations. For popular citation styles(APA, Chicago, MLA), please use this citation page.
