Top 100 Quotes About Not Writing

#1. Scholarly acumen sharpens taste and judgment, but we must never mistake criticism for art. Intellectual analysis, however heady, will not nourish the soul.

Robert McKee

Quotes About Not Writing #808
#2. Through lack of education, we're not teaching kids to read and write. So there is the danger that you raise up a generation of morons.

Ray Bradbury

Quotes About Not Writing #1730
#3. Madness is terrific I can assure you, and not to be sniffed at; and in its lava I still find most of the things I write about. It shoots out of one everything shaped, final, not in mere driblets, as sanity does.

Virginia Woolf

Quotes About Not Writing #1852
#4. If you're going to be a writer, the first essential is just to write. Do not wait for an idea. Start writing something and the ideas will come. You have to turn the faucet on before the water starts to flow.

Louis L'Amour

Quotes About Not Writing #3197
#5. We may not be able to witness our own eulogy, but we're actually writing it all the time, every day.

Arianna Huffington

Quotes About Not Writing #4026
#6. I think that the idea that I'm writing for many more people than I ever imagined has created a certain general responsibility that is literary and political. There's even pride involved, in not wanting to fall short of what I did before.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Quotes About Not Writing #4086
#7. It is by sitting down to write every morning that he becomes a writer. Those who do not do this remain amateurs.

Gerald Brenan

Quotes About Not Writing #6065
#8. A good writer does not write as people write, but as he writes.

Baron De Montesquieu

Quotes About Not Writing #6377
#9. Teach the writer, not the writing.

Lucy Calkins

Quotes About Not Writing #7076
#10. Part of the appeal of the fantastic is taking ridiculous ideas very seriously and pretending they're not absurd.

China Mieville

Quotes About Not Writing #7176
#11. The primary thing I should do, apart from being a good husband, brother, son, and friend, is to be a citizen activist. But I'm afraid it takes away from the writing. Not that anything depends on whether I put an essay in 'The Nation' or not. But you want to participate.

Tony Kushner

Quotes About Not Writing #7578
#12. Generally speaking, writers who have been at it for a while, and who are any good at it, suffer from an acute kind of self-knowledge. The unexamined life is not a risk for them.

Mark Slouka

Quotes About Not Writing #7800
#13. Writing is mostly a case of mood management. The emotion you have is not absolute, it is temporary. It may be useful, but it is not the truth. It is not you.

Anne Enright

Quotes About Not Writing #7925
#14. I sometimes feel that my goal as a novelist would be to write a novel in which the language was so transparent that the reader would forget that language was the medium of understanding. Of course that's not possible, but it's some sort of idealized goal.

Paul Auster

Quotes About Not Writing #8302
#15. For a young and presumptuous poet a disposition to write satires is one of the most dangerous he can encourage. It tempts him to personalities, which are not always forgiven after he has repented and become ashamed of them.

Robert Southey

Quotes About Not Writing #8475
#16. That's not writing, that's typing.

Truman Capote

Quotes About Not Writing #8827
#17. And yes, there's a simplicity to writing books because you're not a member of a team, so you make all the decisions yourself instead of deferring to a committee.

Bernard Cornwell

Quotes About Not Writing #9136
#18. Does it matter that people and things
Have words,
Have names?
If not,
Why read any book?
A litany of useless letters
Detached from bone, muscle.
Or are words the only things that make the muscle, bone, memory, movement,
Person
Real?

Stasia Ward Kehoe

Quotes About Not Writing #9623
#19. I honestly think that in order to be a writer you have to learn to be reverent. If not, why are you writing? Why are you here?

Anne Lamott

Quotes About Not Writing #10207
#20. Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now.

Ernest Hemingway,

Quotes About Not Writing #10273
#21. TV's not the problem, and I'm tired of it being posed as this antithesis to creativity and productivity. If TV's getting in your way of writing a book, then you don't want to write a book bad enough.

Andrea Seigel

Quotes About Not Writing #10549
#22. Give the reader what they want, just not the way they expect it.

William Goldman

Quotes About Not Writing #11129
#23. There are two kinds of typical days. There's the typical day when I'm writing a novel, and there's the typical day when I'm not.

Paul Auster

Quotes About Not Writing #12119
#24. I know that if I have been working on one paragraph and I have written it three times, it goes in the bin. Unless it comes straight out, it is wrong, it is awkward, it does not fit.

Robert Rankin

Quotes About Not Writing #12249
#25. E-mail creates the illusion that you're writing. You're not.

Susan Elizabeth Phillips

Quotes About Not Writing #12699
#26. If I describe a person's physical appearance in my writing, which I often do, especially in fiction, I never say someone is "black" or "white." I may describe the color of their skin - black eyes, beige skin, blue eyes, dark skin, etc. But I'm not talking about race.

Jamaica Kincaid

Quotes About Not Writing #12723
#27. All the time I'm not writing I feel like a criminal. It's horrible to feel felonious every second of the day. It's much more relaxing to actually write.

Fran Lebowitz

Quotes About Not Writing #13127
#28. When a writer calls his work a Romance, it need hardly be observed that he wishes to claim a certain latitude, both as to its fashion and material, which he would not have felt himself entitled to assume had he professed to be writing a Novel.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Quotes About Not Writing #13772
#29. I'm totally active. I am just this side of hyper. I jog and go to the gym every day. When I'm on the computer, I'm reading, I'm writing, I'm never quiet. My brain is very rarely not engaged. Every now and again I will fall asleep under the parasol in the sun, but that's a rarity.

Suzi Quatro

Quotes About Not Writing #13987
#30. This isn't a religious book though I mention God, not a medical advisory though I speak of pain. It's a circus, a mortuary, a grade school, a limousine ride. Will it be worth the paper it's printed on or the screen you hold in your hand? I just hope you remember it next week.

Chila Woychik

Quotes About Not Writing #14345
#31. As an author, I want to write what I'm inspired to write. Not what my readers want me to write. I feel like the books will ultimately be better if my heart is fully into what I'm writing.

Colleen Hoover

Quotes About Not Writing #14673
#32. Love is one of those topics that plenty of people try to write about but not enough try to do.

Criss Jami

Quotes About Not Writing #14689
#33. No, absolutely not, writing doesn't have to be like a jigsaw puzzle, it can be a very linear undertaking.

Guillermo Cabrera Infante

Quotes About Not Writing #14785
#34. Writing is not about ideas, it is about the expression of ideas - a written expression.

Paul Raymond Martin

Quotes About Not Writing #16556
#35. I have always been in a condition in which I cannot not write.

Barbara Tuchman

Quotes About Not Writing #16691
#36. Typographic style is founded not on any one technology of typesetting or printing, but on the primitive yet subtle craft of writing.

Robert Bringhurst

Quotes About Not Writing #16991
#37. I conceive that the right way to write a story for boys is to write so that it will not only interest boys but strongly interest any man who has ever been a boy. That immensely enlarges the audience.

Mark Twain

Quotes About Not Writing #17047
#38. Great writers are not those who tell us we shouldn't play with fire, but those who make our fingers burn.

Stephen Vizinczey

Quotes About Not Writing #17374
#39. The assumption that simple = stupid. But it's not true; indeed, I find from personal experience that the stupidest writers are the ones whose writing is positively baroque in form.

John Scalzi

Quotes About Not Writing #18246
#40. You can write and visualize goals all you want, but if you do not take action, your goals will never become a reality. To obtain a goal you have never before achieved will require tasks you have never before done.

Cameron C. Taylor

Quotes About Not Writing #18487
#41. If I come across an issue, or something I feel strongly about, and I happen to think of a song that would go in that direction, then I do it. But that's not what I start out, necessarily, to do. Sometimes I may have an idea for a song - Well, I'm going to write about a thing.

Charlie Daniels

Quotes About Not Writing #18767
#42. I write whenever it suits me. During a creative period I write every day; a novel should not be interrupted.

Francois Mauriac

Quotes About Not Writing #18915
#43. Writing can be learned, but not taught.

Robert A. Heinlein

Quotes About Not Writing #18953
#44. The best way to be original is to not copy anyone.

Sebastyne Young

Quotes About Not Writing #19436
#45. If you want to be a rock star, you're not going to just walk on stage. You gotta go practice in the garage until your fingers bleed. I always say that - the same with writing and the same with filmmaking - if it's really your passion, you've just got to stick with it and do it.

Robert Rodriguez

Quotes About Not Writing #19475
#46. Sometimes I think creativity is magic; it's not a matter of finding an idea, but allowing the idea to find you.

Maya Lin

Quotes About Not Writing #20052
#47. Read widely, not in order to copy someone else's style, but to learn to appreciate and recognize good writing and to see how the best writers have achieved their result. Poor writing is, unfortunately, infectious and should be avoided.

P.D. James

Quotes About Not Writing #20164
#48. I do not wish to comment on the work; if it does not speak for itself, it is a failure.

George Orwell

Quotes About Not Writing #20167
#49. I have from the first felt sure that the writer, when he sits down to commence his novel, should do so, not because he has to tell a story, but because he has a story to tell. The novelist's first novel will generally have sprung from the right cause.

Anthony Trollope

Quotes About Not Writing #20288
#50. Writing a novel is not method acting and I find it easy to step out of it at cocktail hour.

Bret Easton Ellis

Quotes About Not Writing #20418
#51. When you teach, it's sometimes necessary to consciously not write for a month or two - and then pick a time in the future to sink back in. It makes you less frustrated and more in control. I do best when I give myself breaks and come back hungry.

Tom Barbash

Quotes About Not Writing #21150
#52. 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

Quotes About Not Writing #21151
#53. It's not unusual for writers to look backward. Because that's your pool of resources. If you were to write something now, I bet there's a pretty good chance you'd call on your teenage years, your experiences then, stuff you learned then.

Paul McCartney

Quotes About Not Writing #21445
#54. Reading and writing are not education if they do not help people to be kind to all creatures

John Ruskin

Quotes About Not Writing #22330
#55. Plot joined the expedition unwooed, as a necessary companion. It was not the scout. The scout was a certain mood. I followed that mood, and let the shape of the story flow from that.

Bonnie Friedman

Quotes About Not Writing #22497
#56. 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

Quotes About Not Writing #23295
#57. I need words that mean more than they mean, words not just with height and width, but depth and weight and, and other dimensions that I cannot even name.

Lois McMaster Bujold

Quotes About Not Writing #24043
#58. Like everyone else in this world, I have had struggles. There's disappointment and obstacles in everybody's life. I feel like I was writing 'Second Chance' not just for myself, but also for the people who have struggled.

El DeBarge

Quotes About Not Writing #24079
#59. I do not believe writers should read reviews of their own books, and I do not. If one is not careful one is soon writing to please reviewers and not their audience or themselves.

Louis L'Amour

Quotes About Not Writing #24282
#60. If we don't risk it all, we may as well not write at all.

Anne Stuart

Quotes About Not Writing #24325
#61. We have to learn not to feel guilty about letting our imagination browse around, and you know, in writing fiction particularly. But I think, in any kind of writing, we have to learn to allow ourselves to approach it in a contemplative way.

Sue Monk Kidd

Quotes About Not Writing #24338
#62. And the good writer chooses his words for their 'meaning', but that meaning is not a a set, cut-off thing like the move of knight or pawn on a chess-board. It comes up with roots, with associations, with how and where the word is familiarly used, or where it has been used brilliantly or memorably.

Ezra Pound

Quotes About Not Writing #25079
#63. I am always happy up a ladder with a paintbrush in my hand. And I wish I had more time to spend in the garden - not least because I get good ideas for writing when I'm out there.

Diane Setterfield

Quotes About Not Writing #25122
#64. When writing poetry, it is not that produces a bright idea, but the bright idea that kindles the fire of.

Cesare Pavese

Quotes About Not Writing #25290
#65. We writers don't really think about whether what we write is good or not. It's too much to worry about. We just put the words down, trying to get them right, operating by some inner sense of pitch and proportion, and from time to time, we stick the stuff in an envelope and ship it to an editor.

Garrison Keillor

Quotes About Not Writing #25442
#66. Writing has been a way of explaining to myself the things I do not understand.

Rosario Castellanos

Quotes About Not Writing #25552
#67. I find it hard to express myself when writing from the f - - - heart or the a - , or wherever. It's just like anything, it's (easier) when you get used to it, but I've not done it. I was just a singer in a band.

Liam Gallagher

Quotes About Not Writing #25775
#68. The important thing in writing is the capacity to astonish. Not shock - shock is a worn-out word - but astonish.

Terry Southern

Quotes About Not Writing #25958
#69. The stories are there first, and they come from my experiences wandering around in the world. They will resonate into bigger things, forces sweeping the planet, themes and archetypes, but I'm not smart enough to have lucid integration of all that in my head as I'm writing.

Bob Shacochis

Quotes About Not Writing #26086
#70. Writing across genres has made me more prolific. When one is fighting me or simply not cutting it, I turn to another.

Julianna Baggott

Quotes About Not Writing #26320
#71. I'm a poet who practices Zen. And it's not, I'm somebody who practices Zen who writes poetry. There's no separation for me.

Sam Hamill

Quotes About Not Writing #26423
#72. I couldn't not write. Sometimes I ask myself, How do people get through life without writing? I write to calm anxiety, to process pain. Writing to me is reflection.

Andrew Holleran

Quotes About Not Writing #26479
#73. History-writing is not a visit of condolence.

Sir Lewis Bernstein Namier

Quotes About Not Writing #26545
#74. For me, writing for kids is harder because they're a more discriminating audience. While adults might stay with you, if you lose your pacing or if you have pages of extraneous description, a kid's not going to do that. They will drop the book.

Rick Riordan

Quotes About Not Writing #26823
#75. It takes great courage to write great books. Find your courage and find your voice.

Kristen Lamb

Quotes About Not Writing #27483
#76. The true alchemists do not change lead into gold; they change the world into words.

William H Gass

Quotes About Not Writing #27591
#77. To me, it's not work. When I draw and I write, I find it relaxing. It's not like 9-to-5, where a man goes to a job and he isn't really interested in the job. Luckily, I get paid for doing what I'd do for nothing.

Bob Kane

Quotes About Not Writing #28349
#78. Military people never seem to apologize for killing each other yet novelists feel ashamed for writing some nice inert paper book that is not certain to be read by anybody.

Leonora Carrington

Quotes About Not Writing #29120
#79. Writing should not be routine; writing should actually be the opposite of procedural because otherwise the written word would become a routine word.

Elie Wiesel

Quotes About Not Writing #29342
#80. It's not what you lift, it's where you carry it.

David Foster Wallace

Quotes About Not Writing #29406
#81. I can only speak for myself. But what I write and how I write is done in order to save my own life. And I mean that literally. For me literature is a way of knowing that I am not hallucinating, that whatever I feel/know is.

Barbara Christian

Quotes About Not Writing #29410
#82. At the outset, I think that one should be natural, not just when it comes to writing but in every area of life. If you try to be something that you are not just to impress others, then it's a rather sad life.

Amish Tripathi

Quotes About Not Writing #29838
#83. It was tough to write. We had the shadow of "Lost" hanging around and I just kept saying, "Guys, we need to take a really wide birth around 'Lost.' We're going to get lots of comparisons anyway, but we need to prove, within a couple episodes, that it's not 'Lost.'"

Remi Aubuchon

Quotes About Not Writing #29868
#84. Of course, like all organic processes, there is an ebb and a flow to writing. One does not exist without the other. The writer needs to be vigilant in protecting both, confident in the knowledge that the village will be there when we choose, finally, to open the door.

Lisa Unger

Quotes About Not Writing #29878
#85. An artist should write for himself & not for an audience. If the audience likes it, great. If not, they can keep away.

Artie Shaw

Quotes About Not Writing #31585
#86. Nothing good about this but it's title. A priggish little yarn. And Hidden Riches is not a story
it's a machine. It creaks. It never made me forget for one instant that it was a story. Hence it isn't a story.

L.M. Montgomery

Quotes About Not Writing #31973
#87. People who cannot put strings of sentences together in good order cannot think. An educational system that does not teach the technology of writing is preventing thought.

Richard Mitchell

Quotes About Not Writing #32143
#88. In writing I found something I could do at least as well as my peers, if not better.

Brian P. Cleary

Quotes About Not Writing #32474
#89. If John somehow turns into a different man and we do not witness that transformation, the editor considering your novel will somehow turn into an editor considering a different novel.

Howard Mittelmark

Quotes About Not Writing #32694
#90. I spend all my time trying to keep thoughts away and ignore them ... But here you are, trying to remember your own life, writing your thoughts down so that you don't forget. I suddenly realized what it would be like not to know, not to remember.

Michael Scott

Quotes About Not Writing #33585
#91. To take part in the African revolution, it is not enough to write a revolutionary song. You must fashion the revolution with the people. And if you fashion it with the people, the songs will come by themselves.

Ahmed Sekou Toure

Quotes About Not Writing #34094
#92. It is not my words that I polish, but my ideas. 102

Joseph Joubert

Quotes About Not Writing #34441
#93. In mid-career, I was at one and the same time the rabbi of a major congregation, writing books, and teaching at Columbia. I didn't spend enough time with my children. Now, when I get an all-important call, I sometimes say that I'm having lunch with my granddaughter. And I do not apologize

Arthur Hertzberg

Quotes About Not Writing #35064
#94. I see myself as a first-draft writer, so when I sit down to write something, the first draft is usually pretty close to the end draft. There will be some tweaks along the way, but it's not like I'll go 20 pages and throw it out and start again.

Noah Hawley

Quotes About Not Writing #37139
#95. I don't want my writing to be work to read. My main goal is completely shameless entertainment. I want people to smile and giggle and enjoy the book. I'm not trying to save the world through literature.

Gail Carriger

Quotes About Not Writing #37345
#96. Good sex scene is about the exchange of emotions, not bodily fluids

Diana Gabaldon

Quotes About Not Writing #37751
#97. How do you write when you're not miserable? The solution, of course, is to make yourself miserable about not writing.

Jerry Stahl

Quotes About Not Writing #37844
#98. I do not write about nice people. I am not nice people.

Dorothy Allison

Quotes About Not Writing #38223
#99. It is human nature to look away from illness. We don't enjoy a reminder of our own fragile mortality. That's why writing on the Internet has become a life-saver for me. My ability to think and write have not been affected. And on the Web, my real voice finds expression.

Roger Ebert

Quotes About Not Writing #39411
#100. I don't talk about my books while I'm writing them: not even my husband knows what a novel's about until it's done.

Sarah Dessen

Quotes About Not Writing #39666

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