A word is a bud attempting to become a twig. How can one not dream while writing? It is the pen which dreams. The blank page gives the right to dream. — Gaston Bachelard
writing is a labor of love and also an act of defiance, a way to light a candle in a gale wind. — Alice Childress
Write something, even if it's just a suicide note. — Gore Vidal
Writing is easy. Just sit in front of a typewriter, open up a vein and bleed it out drop by drop. — Red Smith
I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions. — James A. Michener
For words are magical formulae. They leave finger marks be hind on the brain, which in the twinkling of an eye become the footprints of history. One ought to watch one' s every word. — Franz Kafka
Uttering a word is like striking a note on the keyboard of the imagination. — Ludwig Wittgenstein
When you write ,it's like braiding your hair. Taking a handful of coarse unruly strands and attempting to bring then unity. — Edwidge Danticat
Words are a form of action, capable of influencing change. — Ingrid Bengis
Writing is the art of applying the ass to the seat. — Dorothy Parker
Cinematography is a writing with images in mouvement and with sounds. — Robert Bresson
I have always wanted to write a book that ended with the word 'mayonnaise. — Richard Brautigan
I always start writing with a clean piece of paper and a dirty mind. — Patrick Dennis
Poetry is a packsack of invisible keepsakes. — Carl Sandburg
I prefer the absurdity of writing poems to the absurdity of not writing poems. — Wislawa Szymborska
I haven't been everywhere, but it's on my list. — Susan Sontag
There comes a point in your life when you need to stop reading other people's book and write your own.
Words And Writing Quotes
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
Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly -- they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced. — Aldous Huxley
One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple. — Jack Kerouac
Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing about.
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
I can’t write five words but that I change seven. — Dorothy Parker
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
Until the lion learns to write, every story will glorify the hunter.
You don't necessarily have to write to be a poet. Some people work in gas stations and they're poets. I don't call myself a poet, because I don't like the word. I'm a trapeze artist. — Bob Dylan
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
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
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
What Are Words Quotes
This hype word bothers me though It always sounds like an accusation, what does it mean, advertising, column inches in the press? Bands themselves are never really responsible for all of that. That is something that happens to you when you sell millions of records. — Holly Johnson
There comes a point when you either embrace who and what you are, or condemn yourself to be miserable all your days. Other people will try to make you miserable; don't help them by doing the job yourself. — Laurell K. Hamilton
I know what love is. When you find the person you are supposed to love, bells ring and fireworks go off in your head and you can't find the words to speak and you think about him all the time. When you find the person you are supposed to love, you will know by staring deeply into their eyes. — Jodi Picoult
Write hard and clear about what hurts.
Every word, facial expression, gesture, or action on the part of a parent gives the child some message about self-worth. It is sad that so many parents don't realize what messages they are sending. — Virginia Satir
If you have confidence in your own words, aspirations, thoughts, and actions and do your very best, you will have no need to regret the outcome of what you do. Fear and trembling are lot of the person who, while stinting effort, hopes that everything will come out precisely as he wants. — Mas Oyama
You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose. You're on your own, and you know what you know. And you are the guy who'll decide where to go. — Dr. Seuss
Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.
We are what our thoughts have made us; so take care about what you think. Words are secondary. Thoughts live; they travel far. — Swami Vivekananda
It is not impermanence that makes us suffer. What makes us suffer is wanting things to be permanent when they are not. — Nhat Hanh
No printed word, nor spoken plea can teach young minds what they should be. Not all the books on all the shelves - but what the teachers are themselves. — Rudyard Kipling
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
Your life is your story. Write well. Edit often.
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
A good friend knows all your stories. A best friend helped you write them.
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.
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
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
You have the itch for writing born in you. It's quite incurable. What are you going to do with it?
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
I myself have read the writings and teachings of the heretics, polluting my soul for a while with their abominable notions, though deriving this benefit: I was able to refute them for myself and loathe them even more. — Eusebius
Writing Life 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
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
If they give you lined paper, write the other way.
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
Music expresses that which cannot be put into words. — Victor Hugo
I am the author of my life. Unfortunately, I am writing in pen and can’t erase my mistakes. — Bill Kaulitz
Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts.. You need to start somewhere.
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
Writing Well Quotes
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
My twenties were a write-off. It's a cruel illness, because you can't see it and you can hide it so well. — Sarah Lancashire
Writing And Thinking Quotes
When I'm writing, I'm constantly thinking about myself, because it's the only experience I have to draw on. And I don't see an exact reflection of myself in every face in the audience, but I know that my songs have validity to them, and that's why the fans are there. — Chester Bennington
I start to think, and then I sink
Into the paper like I was ink
When I'm writing, I'm trapped in between the lines
I escape when I finish the rhyme. — Rakim
The jaws of power are always open to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing. — John Adams
When I open my mouth and sing, the truth comes out. When I write, the truth comes out. I can't lie. That, I think, is one of the strongest elements of my music. When people talk about my writing as though I'm doing it from an accountant's perspective, it really pisses me off. — George Michael
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 wasn't very good about juggling family and my career. I was interested in who was coming to the children's birthday party, what my son was writing. I was thinking about Legos. — Jill Clayburgh
But, I don't think any arranger should ever write a drum part for a drummer because if a drummer can't create his own Interpretation of the chart and he plays everything that's written, he becomes mechanical; he has no freedom. — Buddy Rich
I know the world is filled with troubles and many injustices. But reality is as beautiful as it is ugly. I think it is just as important to sing about beautiful mornings as it is to talk about slums. I just couldn't write anything without hope in it. — Oscar Hammerstein II
I think its so cool that you can pick up the guitar and create something that didn't exist 5 minutes ago. You can write something that no ones ever heard before. You have music at your fingertips. — Michelle Branch
It's like a novelist writing far out things. If it makes a point and makes sense, then people like to read that. But if it's off in left field and goes over the edge, you lose it. The same with musical talent, I think. — Johnny Cash
Using Words Quotes
When someone isn’t smart enough to express their frustration, they use dirty words. Those are words that describe a lack of intelligence. Smart people don’t use those kind of dirty words, because they find it an insult to their intelligence. — Nouman Ali Khan
There will always be rocks in the road ahead of us. They will be stumbling blocks or stepping stones; it all depends on how you use them. — Friedrich Nietzsche
You will accomplish more by kind words and a courteous manner than by anger or sharp rebuke, which should never be used except in necessity. — Angela Merici
Wherever you go, God is with you - watching over you, protecting you, and providing the truth you need for every situation. The question is, will you open your heart to His Word, apply it to your life, and allow God to change you so that He can use you in ways far greater than you can imagine? — Charles Stanley
The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words. — Philip K. Dick
Mama had an appreciation of the language. She taught me a love of words, of how they should be used and how they can fill a creative soul with a passion and lead to a life's work. — Lewis Grizzard
Nature gave men two ends - one to sit on and one to think with. Ever since then man's success or failure has been dependent on the one he used most. — George Ross Kirkpatrick
Africa’s story has been written by others; we need to own our problems and solutions and write our story. — Paul Kagame
All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town. — Leo Tolstoy
You are going to feel like hell if you never write the stuff that is tugging on the sleeves in your heart--your stories, visions, memories, songs: your truth, your version of things, in your voice. That is really all you have to offer us, and it's why you were born. — Anne Lamott
It's possible, in a poem or short story, to write about commonplace things and objects using commonplace but precise language, and to endow those things—a chair, a window curtain, a fork, a stone, a woman's earring—with immense, even startling power. — Raymond Carver
There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories. — Ursula K. Le Guin
I don't have ugly ducklings turning into swans in my stories. I have ugly ducklings turning into confident ducks. — Maeve Binchy
First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you're inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won't. Habit is persistence in practice. — Octavia Butler
A short story must have a single mood and every sentence must build towards it. — Edgar Allan Poe
Write a short story every week. It's not possible to write 52 bad short stories in a row. — Ray Bradbury
Art Of 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
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 Hank Williams Syndrome: Come to Nashville, write some good songs, cut some hit records, make money, take all the drugs you can and drink all you can, become a wild man and all of a sudden die. — Waylon Jennings
Sometimes I think creativity is magic; it's not a matter of finding an idea, but allowing the idea to find you. — Maya Lin
Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it - whole-heartedly - and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings. — Arthur Quiller-Couch
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
The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair. — Mary Heaton Vorse
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
Writing and rewriting are a constant search for what it is one is saying. — John Updike
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
Writing By Writers Quotes
Journalist: a person without any ideas but with an ability to express them; a writer whose skill is improved by a deadline: the more time he has, the worse he writes. — Karl Kraus
Like most-maybe all- writers, I learned to write by writing and, by example, by reading books. — Francine Prose
You write to communicate to the hearts and minds of others what's burning inside you. — Sayings
The reason 99% of all stories written are not bought by editors is very simple. Editors never buy manuscripts that are left on the closet shelf at home. — John Y. Campbell
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
Writing is the hardest way of earning a living, with the possible exception of wrestling alligators. — Richard Miller
I have never thought of myself as a good writer. Anyone who wants reassurance of that should read one of my first drafts. But I'm one of the world's great rewriters. — James A. Michener
Follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly. — Franz Kafka
The work never matches the dream of perfection the artist has to start with. — William Faulkner
The original writer is not he who refrains from imitating others, but he who can be imitated by none. — François-René de Chateaubriand
Writing Things Down Quotes
Write things down: your mother probably told you this. She’s right. — Estee Lauder
It was my 16th birthday - my mom and dad gave me my Goya classical guitar that day. I sat down, wrote this song, and I just knew that that was the only thing I could ever really do - write songs and sing them to people. — Stevie Nicks
Coming up with ideas is the easiest thing on earth. Putting them down is the hardest. — Rod Serling
I never had any lessons. When I first started playing I used to read music. I was very interested in music. But when I started playing in groups I did a silly thing and dropped it. It's great if you can write things down. — John Bonham
I believe in the moment of things and fate and things happening for a reason, so I write things down and I trust it. — Ellie Goulding
The human mind is a wonderful thing, it starts working from before you're born and doesn't stop till you sit down to write a song. — Roger Miller
When you actually sit down to write some code, you learn things that you didn't get from thinking about them in modeling terms...there is a feedback process there that you can only really get at from executing some things and seeing what works — Martin Fowler
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
Ideas are the most fragile things in the world, and if you do not write them down, they will be lost forever. — Phil Cooke
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
In real life, people fumble their words. They repeat themselves and stare blankly off into space and don't listen properly to what other people are saying. I find that kind of speech fascinating but screenwriters never write dialogue like that because it doesn't look good on the page. — Christopher Guest
He writes so well he makes me feel like putting my quill back in my goose. — Fred Allen
Nothing stinks like a pile of unpublished writing. — Sylvia Plath
When you're rich, you don't write checks. Straight cash, homey. — Randy Moss
Before you speak, listen. Before you write, think. Before you spend, earn. Before you invest, investigate. Before you criticize, wait. Before you pray, forgive. Before you quit, try. Before you retire, save. Before you die, give. — William Arthur Ward
God writes the Gospel not in the Bible alone, but also on trees, and in the flowers and clouds and stars. — Martin Luther
Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly. — Franz Kafka
In Conclusion
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