Top 100 Quotes About The Act Of Writing
#1. I think 'Cool Hand Luke' was probably the first movie in which I was aware of the writing as its own separate thing. It was that speech when the guy reads Paul Newman the riot act. The speech about going in the box.
Brian Helgeland
#2. Observing people. A spark of idea for a story sometimes comes from the simple act of observation.
Ika Natassa
#3. I may be writing well, I may be writing poorly, but I enjoy the act of writing and sometimes when it turns out okay, I feel an elation that is incomparable.
James Lipton
#4. With drawing, I am acutely aware of creating something on a sheet of paper. It is a sensual act, which you cannot say about the act of writing. In fact, I often turn to drawing to recover from the writing.
Gunter Grass
#5. I think one of the reasons I'm so thrilled with writing is because it is an act of reading for me at the same time, which is why my revisions are so sustained.
Toni Morrison
#6. Because as any writer will tell you, an IDEA for a book is like falling in love, it's all wild emotion and headlong rush, but the ACTUAL ACT of writing a book is like building a relationship: it is joyous, slow, fragile, frustrating, exhilarating, painstaking, exhausting, worth it.
Ben H. Winters
#7. The heart is a river. The act of writing is the moving water that holds the banks apart, keeps the muscle of words flexing so that the reader can be carried along by this movement. To be given space and the chance to leave one's earthly world. Is there any greater freedom than this?
Helen Humphreys
#8. Writing is the act of finding out what I think.
Stephen King
#9. I won't say that writing is therapy, but for me, the act of writing is therapy. The ability to be productive is good for my mental health. It's always better for me to be writing than vegetating on some couch.
Raymond E. Feist
#10. Increase the number of adventures you act on and you'll lighten the weight of regret.
Gina Greenlee
#11. In a way, writing is an incredible act of individualism, producing your language, and yet to use it from the heart of a crowd as opposed to as an individual performance is a conflicting thing. I do stand alone, and yet it's not about being an individual or being ambitious.
Arundhati Roy
#12. The men who act stand nearer to the mass of man than the men who write; and it is in their hands that new thought gets its translation into the crude language of deeds.
Woodrow Wilson
#13. To present a whole world that doesn't exist and make it seem real, we have to more or less pretend we're polymaths. That's just the act of all good writing.
William Gibson
#14. The act of writing for the slave constituted the act of creating a public, historical self, not only the self of the individual author but also the self, as it were, of the race.
Henry Louis Gates
#15. Take out another notebook, pick up another pen, and just write, just write, just write. In the middle of the world, make one positive step. In the center of chaos, make one definitive act. Just write. Say yes, stay alive, be awake. Just write. Just write. Just write.
Natalie Goldberg
#16. A writer's life is so hazardous that anything he does is bad for him. Anything that happens to him is bad: failure's bad, success is bad; impoverishment is bad, money is very, very bad. Nothing good can happen ... Except the act of writing.
E.L. Doctorow
#17. Literature, the act of writing, affirms life, however dark the story it tells.
Marty Rubin
#18. You can't really discover the most interesting conflicts and problems in a subject until you've tried to write about them. At that point, one discovers discontinuities in the data, perhaps, or in one's own thinking; then the act of writing forces you to work harder to resolve these contradictions.
Anthony F. C. Wallace
#19. It's funny to think about the uncanny reflexively, as an author who is perhaps gradually becoming aware of my own hidden secrets. Accessing that shadowy territory really requires the physical act of writing.
Karen Russell
#20. Writing ... is an act of faith: I believe it's also an act of hope, the hope that things can get better than they are.
Margaret Atwood
#21. However great a man's natural talent may be, the act of writing cannot be learned all at once.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
#22. Romanticizing the act of writing or any other art is not very helpful to the artist or the art. It's much better if one simply does.
Anne Roiphe
#23. Writing is an act of discovery in which you peel back the layers of the story as you write it down.
Matt Forbeck
#24. The act of writing is an act of optimism. You would not take the trouble to do it if you felt that it didn't matter.
Edward Albee
#25. I write in praise of the solitary act: of not feeling a trespassing tongue forced into one's mouth, one's breath smothered, nipples crushed against the ribcage, and that metallic tingling in the chin set off by a certain odd nerve: unpleasure.
Fleur Adcock
#26. Writing is not magic. It's a craft, a process, a set of steps. As with any process, things sometimes break down. Even in a good story, the writer runs into problems. So the act of writing always includes problem solving.
Roy Peter Clark
#27. Writing is my drug of choice. Everyday, I write. It eases out the pressure in my head and it all lands on a blank piece of paper. It has its own healing power and it gives me a feeling of contentment. Very addictive, yet it is not a criminal act.
Sonnia Kemmer
#28. The act of writing itself is done in secret, like masturbation.
Stephen King
#29. Henry James joyously engaged in the act of writing. A good day's writing gave him a sense of strength, of control over chaos, a victory of order and clarity over the confused battle of existence.
Leon Edel
#30. I feel like the writers that I'm drawn to, the writers that I really cling to, are the writers who seem to be writing out of a desperate act. It's like their writing is part of a survival kit. Those are the writers that I just absolutely cherish and carry with me everywhere I go.
Sam Shepard
#31. I read what I'd written and thought once again: from what violent chasms is my most intimate intimacy nourished, why does it deny itself so much and flee to the domain of ideas? I feel within me a subterranean violence, a violence that only comes to the surface during the act of writing.
Clarice Lispector
#32. One of the traps or the pitfalls of writing a trilogy - or a triptych, or whatever term you want to use - is that the second book can be a long second act to get you from book one to book three, which borrows all of its energy from the first book.
Justin Cronin
#33. Perhaps the act of writing is necessary when nothing happens.
Kobo Abe
#34. Use the words that live inside your head. And if the words that live inside your head are those of a sentimental Victorian troubadour, then please close your head in a door jamb until you kill all that overwrought prose in an act of brain damage.
Chuck Wendig
#35. I think that writing should be honest and simple, and it should say something about what it means to be a person. When God is good to us, we write in such a way that the act of reading becomes a pleasure to those who buy our books.
M.V. Carey
#36. ...because writing is fundamentally an act of reaching out from self to other. It is a reminder that we are not alone in the universe, that we have comrades on our journey through life.
Alicia Rasley
#37. Thought the mind can justify itself faster than the speed of light, it can be stopped through the act of writing.
Byron Katie
#38. I always talk to my students about the need to write for the joy of writing. I try to sort of disaggregate the acclaim from the act of writing.
Kim Edwards
#39. What I do in the writing of any character is to try to enter into the mind, heart and skin of a human being who is not myself. It is the act of a writer's imagination that I set the most high.
Eudora Welty
#40. ...one of the main purposes of our assesment is to find evidence of the children using these ideas to make decisions about their writing work each day, catching them in the act [of writing].
Katie Wood Ray
#41. Writing is an act of faith. One must believe and see people who are invisible to others and be faithful to tell half formed stories. It's like being on the trail of an apparition who's repeatedly just out of reach.
K. Youngblood
Katherine Imogene Youngblood
#42. Books choose their authors; the act of creation is not entirely a rational and conscious one.
Salman Rushdie
#43. The act of writing ... is the act of trying to understand why my opinion is what it is. And ultimately, I think that's the same experience the reader has when they pick up one of my books.
Jodi Picoult
#44. He possessed the logic of all good intentions and a knowledge of all the tricks of his trade, and yet he never succeeded at anything, because he believed too much in the impossible. Surprising? Why so? He was forever in the act of conceiving it!
Charles Baudelaire
#45. The writer and his reader are both complicit in the act of storytelling. The writer must first leave a part of his soul on the page,like a contagion, which the reader then catches.
Cynthia Ogren
#46. I wish i could write them down, these little coloured parables or poems that live for a moment in some cell of my brain, and then leave it to go wandering elsewhere. I hate writing; the mere act of writing a thing down is troublesome to me. I want some fine medium, and look for it in vain.
Oscar Wilde
#47. I write whatever shows up. That's good enough for me. I'm part of the first generation that wants to still do original material and not tour around as an oldies act.
Lou Reed
#48. I'm a writer, and the subject is less important than the act of writing itself.
Jess Walter
#49. Not all writing is political or revolutionary, but the very act of giving yourself permission to write, to speak, to share the truth no matter whether the truth you understand is the truth others want to acknowledge, is brave, powerful, and important.
Dinty W. Moore
#50. A writer will do anything to avoid the act of writing.
William Zinsser
#51. History is a succession of things that ought never to have happened, and the writing act is a kind of revenge against this.
Breyten Breytenbach
#52. The act of writing is a kind of catharsis, a liberation, but I never really concerned myself with that. I write because it interests me.
Nathalie Sarraute
#53. If there is no mystery, for the artist, to solve inside of his art, then there's no point in it ... for me, every act of art is the act of solving a mystery.
Truman Capote
#54. The only time I know that something is true is the moment I discover it in the act of writing.
Jean Malaquais
#55. Through the act of writing, a writer learns more about himself than he could ever imagine.
Rob Bignell, Editor
#56. I don't particularly enjoy standing alone and recording my own voice or my own stuff. It's sometimes fun to do for demos and stuff, but I really enjoy the social act of recording records, because writing it is so lonely. And it has to be.
Sondre Lerche
#57. For some reason, the act of writing them down makes me remember. Each word I write brings me closer to finding the right one.
Ally Condie
#58. At first I had no skills in writing comedy. I didn't know what a joke was, but, as someone once told me, your emotions follow your intent. If you create the intention of starting a comedy act, slowly your mind starts adjusting and you arrive at a new emotional state.
Steve Martin
#59. Inspiration comes from the act of writing.
Steve Doll
#60. The act of creation fascinates me. You can only sit with blank page and wait. You cannot press a button, cannot program it.
Joan Rivers
#61. I almost always urge people to write in the first person ... Writing is an act of ego and you might as well admit it.
William Zinsser
#62. The story of Jesus makes no sense to me. God sent his only son. Why could God only have one son and why would he have to die? It's just bad writing, really. And it's really terrible in about the second act.
Trey Parker
#63. If you're hooked on the physical act of writing, there's a good chance of your hanging in there long enough to say what you were born to say.
Peter Meinke
#64. Writing fiction is the act of weaving a series of lies to arrive at a greater truth.
Khaled Hosseini
#65. I write because the act of writing itself is what drives me. It's a private communication within myself - nothing more or less. This doesn't mean I do not want to share with people.
Michael Hersch
#66. In many ways, writing is the act of saying 'I,' of imposing oneself upon other people, of saying, 'Listen to me, see it my way, change your mind.' It's an aggressive, even a hostile act.
Joan Didion
#67. The act of writing should not be accompanied by the sense of an audience, someone peering over your shoulder, but in nonfiction I think it's almost imperative that you identify an audience so you can confirm or challenge or undermine whatever ideas or prejudices they might have about your subject.
Pankaj Mishra
#68. I write because in the act of creation there comes that mysterious, abundant sense of being both parent and child; I am giving birth to an Other and simultaneously being reborn as a child in the playground of creation.
Francine Du Plessix Gray
#69. The mental state I'm in is completely different, but the act of trying to write is the same. I mean, in all instances you try to write good sentences. But in a novel you're free to do whatever you want, and in the autobiographical works you can't make things up.
Paul Auster
#70. The act of writing is the act of discovering what you believe.
David Hare
#71. The symbiotic relationship between reading and writing is a cornerstone of our individual intellectual journey and our educational system. We write as an act of self-expression. We read because language renders unto us the vitality of real and imagined experience.
Marita Golden
#72. I write because I admire the act of rationalization, of seeking clarity in one's understanding of the complexities of life, and I'm bad at it. I'm slow. Writing, which is an arduous and slow process, proceeds at the same rate as my sloth-like mind.
Gregory Maguire
#73. The most clear-sided view of the darkest
possible situation is itself an act of optimism
Jean-Paul Sartre
#74. The act of song writing and recording became one and the same to me; because I essentially recorded everything I did from the day I began trying to write songs. I've always had a lot to say. I'd always written poems.
Adam Goldberg
#75. (Writing is) the transformation, through an elaborate impersonation, of a personal emergency into a public act (in both senses of that word).
Philip Roth
#76. I was always writing. I was writing in high school because it was a really competitive school for class clowns; I used to have to write all of my snaps and my disses the night before and then act like I was making it up the next day.
John Leguizamo
#77. Acting is contained - you act for three months, then leave it - but writing is the act of creation. Writing is dangerous.
Sophie Marceau
#78. The act of self-expression - through writing a journal or letters - often enables a survivor to distance himself from his fears.
Nathaniel Philbrick
#79. Writing is the act of creation. Put words on a page, words to sentences, sentences to paragraphs, paragraphs to seven-book epic fantasy cycles with books so heavy you could choke a hippo. But don't give writing too much power, either. A wizard controls his magic; it doesn't control him.
Chuck Wendig
#80. The act of writing itself isn't outrageous. And the institution subtly and insidiously works on you in such a way that though you seem to have freedom you become a servant. Your main issue is to get promoted to the next thing. Or get invited to a picnic. Or get tenure. Or get laid.
Gerald Stern
#81. For me, writing plays is far more an act of the mind than of the emotions. It's a very different kind of impulse than fiction writing.
Jim Grimsley
#82. Almost 70 years have gone by, and I've still got that feeling when I write ... Writing, for me, is still it. It has always been the basis of everything I do. I'm a writer who performs, not a performer who writes. I love the act of writing. It's still a thrill for me.
Clive James
#83. What mattered was writing it: the act of words.
Rose Tremain
#84. I don't care about my "impact" - I only care about the theater as an art form and criticism as an act of writing.
Neil Patrick Harris
#85. 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
#86. Now that I'm staring down the barrel of the last act of my life, I'm less excited about control and solo effort, and I resent the way the business aspects interfere with my space for creative writing.
David Knopfler
#87. Writing is the act of saying "I," of imposing oneself upon other people, of saying "listen to me, see it my way, change your mind."
Joan Didion
#88. In writing, the point is not to manifest or exalt the act of writing, nor is it to pin a subject within language; it is, rather, a question of creating a space into which the writing subject constantly disappears.
Michel Foucault
#89. Writing a novel is an act of self-annihilation as much as self-discovery. You can kill whole appetites and flood whole depths while plumbing them, but if you are serious about it you also get to put something into the world that wasn't quite there before.
Andrew O'Hagan
#90. There is a ruthlessness to the creative act. It often involves a betrayal of the status quo.
Alan Watt
#91. Writing about oneself is an egotistical adventure unless the act of self-exploration revolves around the distinct goal of heightening a person's cache of knowledge, ideas, and level of self-awareness.
Kilroy J. Oldster
#92. The characters act for reasons that they can't control and, as readers, we have to believe in their motivations, their sense of choice and in the reality of their suffering, even though, deep down, we know it's all just puppetry on the part of the writer.
Johnny Rich
#93. As I work, I see my writing - each scene, each chapter, each section, each book - in three-act structures and classic myths, and I analyze them through the handy filter of the detective story.
Nick Harkaway
#94. My own words, when I am at work on a story, I hear too as they go, in the same voice that I hear when I read in books. When I write and the sound of it comes back to my ears, then I act to make changes. I have always trusted this voice.
Eudora Welty
#95. There's just something "off" about equating the act of spending three years writing a book with the act of someone exploiting themselves by drunkenly flashing the camera for "Girls Gone Wild" or something.
Marie Calloway
#96. Once writing becomes an act of listening instead of an act of speech, a great deal of the ego goes out of it.
Julia Cameron
#97. You may not want to hear that or think of it as writing, but I'm telling you that the moving of information is a literary act in and of itself. Even when people aren't reading it.
Kenneth Goldsmith
#98. In writing with detail, you are turning to face the world. It is a deeply political act, because you are not staying in the heat of your own emotions. You are offering up some good solid bread for the hungry.
Natalie Goldberg
#99. To me, the act of writing itself is infinitely more important than any success I have achieved through it. Not that I'm knocking success, but after all, I'm the person locked in front of my TRS 80 anywhere from eight to twelve hours a day.
Jacqueline Briskin
#100. Your words are so powerful that they can break
hearts or fill them with joy. Your words have
the ability to comfort a wounded soul or shatter
someone's confidence. Your words can act as your
messengers of hope or a salve for a broken human
being.
Rachel C. Weingarten
