Top 100 Great Writing Quotes
#1. There was a lot of great writing couples, but I try to do it all myself. And it was practically impossible, but I still managed to be ahead of my time.
Jackie DeShannon
#2. Nothing teaches great writing like the very best books do. Yet, good teachers often help students cross that bridge, and I have to say that I had a few extraordinary English teachers in high school whom I still credit for their guidance.
Julia Glass
#3. There is a musical rhythm to great writing, especially if it's performed correctly.
Richard LaGravenese
#4. When should you show more than tell? Great writing is balanced! You do not want to be a show-all, or a tell-all. And remember we are storytellers. Balance is the key! And let your ear be the guide. Is it too heavy, or too light? Or is it just right?
Mark Donnelly
#5. Of course you want to be good and you want to do the best you can, but I am inspired by great writing. If there's something about the script, that's what I go for, although I know that that doesn't always translate because sometimes it's about the vision of the director.
Sally Hawkins
#6. There is a mystery in all great writing and that mystery does not dissect out. It continues and is always valid.
Ernest Hemingway,
#7. Great writing is great writing. It's as simple as all that.
Kate Mulgrew
#8. For no. 1, it's great writing, super writing. The second thing is that it's great chemistry with all the actors. We just all got along from the very start. Very get-go, we all got along. We just - it was just like we were all meant to be there together.
Reba McEntire
#9. I loved 'Everybody Loves Raymond' because I like Ray and I thought it was beautifully cast, I thought it was great writing. I thought Patricia Heaton was wonderful.
Bob Newhart
#10. It is said that you can't write without a reader. The opposite holds true as well; you can't read without a writer. But if as a single, creative person you are one in the same, then, well ... problem solved! Great writing is born from that which we personally long to read.
Richelle E. Goodrich
#12. The thing I respond to the most is just great writing, interesting characters. I like to think that there is something fun about playing a character that has a lot of authority in her own life.
Marin Ireland
#13. One of the key secrets of great writing is knowing where to start and when to stop.
Chloe Thurlow
#14. I was opposed to doing TV for a long time because I thought the quality of writing wasn't very strong, as opposed to film, but there's been a shift in term of the quality of scripts. HBO has attracted a tremendous amount of great writing talent.
Peter Dinklage
#15. I'm personally attracted to great writing - that's what turns me on the most.
Michael Mando
#16. God produced great writing, a matter of first importance to a man like Lincoln, ever impressed with the nature of cause and forces.
Richard Brookhiser
#17. And if you have great writing, it's really easy, but if it's not so great and you have to work a little harder, I could tell where the work needed to be done but comedy is just fun.
Matt LeBlanc
#18. It ratified a theory of mine that great writing could sneak up on you, master of a thousand disguises: prodigal kinsman, messenger boy, class clown, commander of artillery, altar boy, lace maker, exiled king, peacemaker, or moon goddess.
Pat Conroy
#19. I so admire great writing done quickly, with great detail.
Peter King
#21. Like every great writer before or since, Jonson understood that the best poets 'are both made and born'. That all great writing has to be hammered out and all great poets stand or fall by that 'second heat', their laboured revision.
James Shapiro
#22. I spent years in a graduate literature program learning what makes great writing, and the only conclusion we came to was that the future of graduate literature programs was safe because nobody is ever going to agree on what makes great writing.
Brandon Sanderson
#23. In truly good writing no matter how many times you read it you do not know how it is done. That is beacause there is a mystery in all great writing and that mystery does not dis-sect out. It continues and it is always valid. Each time you re-read you see or learn something new.
Ernest Hemingway,
#24. I just like to go where the material is, whether that's TV, or movies, or the stage. As long as it's great writing, it's pretty much something I can't resist.
Sarah Shahi
#25. Great writing requires great doubt and great self-confidence. One without the other inspires mediocrity.
Chloe Thurlow
#26. Now some people will tell you that great writing cannot be learnt. Such people should be hit repeatedly on the nose until they promise not to talk nonsense any more.
Mark Forsyth
#27. I haven't ever found any great writing on that wonderful and often unappreciated art form, the insult.
Dick Cavett
#28. As much as I revere great writing, and am still humbled by it, literary activities are no longer esoteric to me. When I read a great novel - something that I could never have written myself - I'm still looking at it a little bit like a technician.
Jonathan Lethem
#29. Like Flannery O'Connor, McCorkle's genius is to give us both philosophical speculation and a riveting narrative filled with unforgettable characters. Great writing, poignancy, humor, wisdom-all are in abundance here. Jill McCorkle is one of the South's greatest writers; she is also one of America's.
Ron Rash
#31. There is only one secret to great writing and that's great writing.
Chloe Thurlow
#32. There's a need to perfect things in a writers' room, and that can take a lot of fun out of a show sometimes. It's a struggle. It depends on your personality. Some people love working with a writing staff. I had a great writing staff on Lucky Louie, but it sometimes felt like Congress or something.
Louis C.K.
#33. All you ever really want is a great character and great writing. As an actor, that's the juiciest sandwich you could ever ask for.
Jill Scott
#34. Great writing is always rewriting or revisionism, and is founded on a reading that clears space for the self.
Harold Bloom
#35. That's where everything starts, as an actor: you've gotta have great writing and great character development, and then you have really great materials to work from.
Matt Lauria
#36. It's hard to imagine there's a place for great writing inside a multinational conglomerate.
Matthew Specktor
#37. It's just lovely to be involved in a movie that does go back to the basics - characters and great writing.
Clive Owen
#38. People don't really have a relationship with great writing or great production or great art direction or great direction. They just sort of admire it.
Steven Moffat
#39. If the written word has contributed anything at all to our developing species and our half developed culture, it is this: Great writing has been a staff to lean on, a mother to consult, a wisdom to pick up stumbling folly, a strength in weakness and a courage to support sick cowardice.
John Steinbeck
#40. The raw beauty of Natalia Ginzburg's prose compels our gaze. First we look inward, with the shock of recognition inspired by all great writing, and then, inevitably, out at the shared world she evokes with such uncompromising clarity.
Hilma Wolitzer
#41. Your ability to name every single variation of Kryptonite and every first issue in which it appears is a great pop quiz skill, but is not a great writing skill, all right? So just because you can do that doesn't mean you know how to write.
Greg Rucka
#42. A dysfunctional family makes for great writing -
Angela Rose
#43. Great writing attracts great actors. It attracts money. Without a great script, you have nothing.
Andy Garcia
#44. The pleasure from acting comes from having great writing to work with. If it's well written and the character is interesting, then, as an actor, that's the raw material I need.
Aasif Mandvi
#45. There is no such thing as great writing - there is only great re-writing!
Ernest Hemingway,
#46. Without great writing, you've got a bunch of actors bumping into each other.
Bob Newhart
#47. But you can't say that what you learn in English class doesn't matter. That great writing doesn't make a difference. I'm
Meg Wolitzer
#48. For me, the guitar synthesizer is a great writing instrument.
Andy Summers
#49. Blade Runner was the godfather of all these fantastic movies that occur today. What's frustrating is that we're short of really great writing and great ideas. Blade Runner was full of them.
Ridley Scott
#50. I love great writing. I like interesting characters. I like to work with people who push me to be better, to elevate my game.
Julie Ann Emery
#52. Great writing can be done in biography, history, art.
V.S. Naipaul
#53. You can have good writing, but a great actor will make it feel and sound like great writing. You can have great writing, and mediocre actors will make it feel mediocre. Without the actors, you have nothing.
Denis Leary
#54. Now you're discovering the great secret of great writing: one line of true feeling is worth a thousand pages of clever thinking.
Menna Van Praag
#55. There's such good writing now on television and I don't see a lot of great writing on films sadly.
Scott Speedman
#56. When I was very young in London, I had a bank account, which didn't have a great deal in it. I should think at least every three months the bank manager would call me up and threaten to strangle me because I had no money, and I was writing checks.
Peter Mayle
#58. When writing a book what is more important? Grammar and spelling or telling a great story? I know which I would choose.
Samuel Colbran
#59. A great writer has a high respect for values. His essential function is to raise life to the dignity of thought, and this he does by giving it a shape.
Andre Maurois
#60. No matter how many people try, no matter how many fancy songwriters in Los Angeles try to break it down to a formula ... to an extent, there isn't a science to writing great songs, I suppose.
Lauren Mayberry
#61. Spend sunny afternoons writing. Take weekends in the country. Dream. Drink good wine, eat fabulous cheese and great bread. Make the kind of love that destroys the bed.
Rachel Hauck
#62. I like writing for other people. I love it. It's great because you write it and then you hand it off to someone else. But in terms of directing, anything I direct will be something I've written or re-written. I'm in no crazy rush to direct.
Nicholas Stoller
#63. Great writers are not those who tell us we shouldn't play with fire, but those who make our fingers burn.
Stephen Vizinczey
#64. So writing is not just writing. It is also having a relationship with other writers. And don't be jealous, especially secretly. That's the worst kind. If someone writes something great, it's just more clarity in the world for all of us.
Natalie Goldberg
#65. It takes great courage to write great books. Find your courage and find your voice.
Kristen Lamb
#66. Packs a Huge Emotional Punch! Graceful Writing, Great Acting, Exquisite Direction, Suspense, Profound Subject Matter and It Rocks!
Rex Reed
#67. An artist should write for himself & not for an audience. If the audience likes it, great. If not, they can keep away.
Artie Shaw
#68. The research. It is always the best part of writing. And, of course, it is the great excuse to travel.
Michael Scott
#69. A great many people have come up to me and asked how I manage to get so much work done and still keep looking so dissipated.
Robert Benchley
#70. Generations from now, when historians write about these times, they might note that, in the early decades of the twenty-first century, the United States succeeded in its great and historic mission
it globalized the world. But along the way, they might write, it forgot to globalize itself.
Fareed Zakaria
#71. A great deal of the bad writing in the world comes simply from writing too quickly. Of course you reply, "I do it to save time". A very good object, no doubt: but what right have you to do it at your friend's expense? Isn't his time as valuable as yours?
Lewis Carroll
#72. I think the business of writing a great deal of it is the business of paying attention to your characters, to the world they live in, to the story you have to tell, but just a kind of deep attention and out of that if you pay attention properly the story will tell you what it needs.
Salman Rushdie
#73. Sometimes people can write really great scenes and even a great episode, but they can't see the bigger picture.
M. Night Shyamalan
#74. Take a great adventure to a place, learn the rich history and make your own observation about the place.
Lailah Gifty Akita
#75. Mark Twain was so good with crowds that he became, in competition with singers and dancers and actors and acrobats, one of the most popular performers of his time. It is so unusual, and so psychologically unlikely, too, for a great writer to be a great performer, too ...
Kurt Vonnegut
#76. Good programmers know what to write. Great ones know what to rewrite (and reuse)
Eric S. Raymond
#77. Sondheim is my god; I love the man. I learned a great deal about writing from his work, his lyrics, and his structure.
Richard LaGravenese
#78. I write titles that are confrontational. I write titles that make people want to pick up a book and find out more about it. I write good books; I write great titles though.
Larry Winget
#79. I wanted to be an artist. I was studying art. I wanted to be a great painter. When I went into the Navy, there wasn't much to draw at sea. So I began writing, and I began reading a lot.
Evan Hunter
#80. The great thing about writing compared to life is getting to tie things up.
Kate Atkinson
#81. He would write it for the reason he felt that all great literature, fiction and nonfiction, was written: truth comes out, in the end it always comes out. He would write it because he felt he had to.
Stephen King
#82. I really like Shakespeare a lot. The characters that he writes for females, I think, are really great and a lot more compelling than what modern writers write, which is weird because they didn't have actresses then.
Julia Stiles
#83. The idea that creative endeavor and mind-altering substances are entwined is one of the great pop-intellectual myths of our time.
Stephen King
#84. Writing has become my great joy - I simply love it.
Dawn French
#85. I do Twitter, but I'm still not great on it - I'm not good at writing short little jokes, so my Twitter's not really a jokey thing.
Cecily Strong
#87. When talking about writing, I often use the analogy of archaeology. There are these great tunes all around. Your skill as a musician allows you to pick them out without breaking them.
Pat Metheny
#88. People still make New Year's resolutions? Wow. I figured those were pointless once I perfected myself by directing, writing, and acting in Garden State. I guess it makes sense, though. It gives people a chance to hope that they can become as great as me someday.
Zach Braff
#89. I started out wanting to write great poems, then wanting to discover true poems. Now, I want to be the poem.
Mark Nepo
#90. The whole process of writing a novel is having this great, beautiful idea and then spoiling it.
Diane Johnson
#91. I hope that the feeling of making poetry is not confined to the people who write it down. There is no luxury like it, and I hope we all share it ... I am sure that the great glory of poetry in one's heart does not wait on achievement.
Stella Benson
#92. The Internet is a limitless library at your fingertips. It's a great place to start with the acquisition of knowledge. My process is to go to a place when I'm writing about it. Nothing captures the essence, feeling and flavor of a place better than when I'm actually there and doing the writing.
Barry Eisler
#93. Maybe you could be a great writer - maybe even good enough to write a book or articles in a newspaper - but you might not know it until you write that English paper - that English class paper that's assigned to you.
Barack Obama
#94. How much there is I want to do! I always feel that I haven't time to accomplish what I wish. I want to read much. I wanted to write a great deal. I want to make money.
Irving Fisher
#95. Great commanders write their actions with simplicity; because they receive more glory from facts than from words.
Baron De Montesquieu
#96. I was at a party in 1989 and Ian McEwan, Martin Amis and Salman Rushdie were sitting on a sofa wondering where the next generation of great British writers would come from. As we talked, it became clear they had never read a word by me.
Jeanette Winterson
#97. My dream is to do exactly what I'm doing. I love writing and directing, and being somebody that can write about an artist I love or make a film about it. That's great. I would leave the other stuff to those who do it much better.
Cameron Crowe
#98. Primo Levi's - I mean, he's a very different kind of writer. He's a much more formal writer. He's a much more -almost detached. I mean, I wouldn't really say that he's detached ultimately. But he does write as a scientist, and so he describes things very - in great detail, very carefully.
Ann Goldstein
#99. Long, long ago, my great mentor in graduate school, the late Darb, he said if you're writing for a popular audience, you do not start by saying, 'Consider a small, open economy..' You say, 'In Belgium.
Paul Krugman
#100. The writing of headline is one of the great journalistic arts. They either conceal or reveal am interest
Claude C. Hopkins
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