Top 100 Quotes About Words And Writing
#1. 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
#2. All writing is garbage. People who come out of nowhere to try and put into words any part of what goes on in their minds are pigs.
Antonin Artaud
#3. 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
#4. Instead of noting down things I'm unlikely to forget, I will write a poem. Even if I have never written one before and even if I never do so again, I will at least know that I once had the courage to put my feelings into words.
Paulo Coelho
#5. All stories come from the writer's heart, and all hearts speak the same language, a wordless language ancient as time, and for the writer, this is the eternal struggle, to translate the wordless into words.
Stan D. Jensen
#6. Confront the page that taunts you with its whiteness. Face your enemy and fill it with words. You are bigger and stronger than a piece of paper.
Fennel Hudson
#7. With words ... one can cut & kill:but also one can cure and heal.
Darrius Garrett
#8. 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
#9. 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
#10. 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
#11. And the reason you hate writing so much is because you start analyzing your work before you're done pouring it onto the page. Your Left-brain won't let your Right-brain do it's job ... Your Right-brain gets the words on the page. The Left-brain makes them sing.
Jeff Bollow
#12. Only another writer can know how much damage writing a novel can do to you. It's an unnatural activity to sit at a desk and squeeze words out of yourself.
Norman Mailer
#13. I write because I like to write. I find joy in the texture and tone and rhythm of words. It is a satisfaction like that which follows good and shared love.
John Steinbeck
#14. Headline writing is tough because often times you are given a predetermined number of spaces and words depending on the layout and the type of the story.
Jennifer Lee
#16. Because there are hundreds of different ways to say one thing, I, being a writer, songwriter, and poet, speak childishly and incoherently. In speech there is so much to decide in so little time.
Criss Jami
#17. Set fire to cities and nations, to hearts and minds, to the very core of every human spirit. Make sure your words seep into the skin of the reader, leaving trace minerals that sustain the ailing human shell. Make them pay attention. Set fire to the soul. Anything less is an abomination to creation.
Susan Marie
#18. All I'm writing is just what I feel, that's all. I just keep it almost naked. And probably the words are so bland.
Jimi Hendrix
#19. Sometimes when I'm writing, I wonder if the words have a mind of their own, and if they're really just using me as a puppet to manifest themselves.
Travis J. Dahnke
#20. I write poems for myself and I write poetry that gets torn apart and becomes songs. I have a lot of respect for words, the power of words.
Kurt Cobain
#21. And perhaps,frozen somewhere with time,
Our words will never cease to rhyme
Stuti Dhyani
#22. One has to work very carefully with what is in between the words. What is not said. Which is measure, which is rhythm and so on. So, it is what you don't write that frequently gives what you do write its power.
Toni Morrison
#23. I love words. I crave descriptions that overwhelm my imagination with vivid detail. I dwell on phrases that make my heart thrum. I cherish expressions that pierce my emotions and force the tears to spill over. In essence, I long for a writer's soul sealed in ink on the page.
Richelle E. Goodrich
#24. So how do you do it, with just words and just music, capture the feeling that my Earth is somebody's ceiling?
Sara Bareilles
#25. This is all you have to do. Sit down once a day to the novel and start working without internal criticism, without debilitating expectations, without the need to look at your words as if they were already printed and bound. The beginning is only a draft. Drafts are imperfect by definition.
Walter Mosley
#26. 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
#27. I've always just wanted to earn my living by writing. The best thing is to go into my study in the morning and put words together.
Robert Harris
#28. The story of the English writing system is so intriguing, and the histories behind individual words so fascinating, that anyone who dares to treat spelling as an adventure will find the journey rewarding.
David Crystal
#29. I like to get ten pages a day, which amounts to 2,000 words. That's 180,000 words over a three-month span, a goodish length for a book - something in which the reader can get happily lost, if the tale is done well and stays fresh.
Stephen King
#30. Christ is the Word of God in person. The Bible is the Word of God in writing. Both are the Word of God in the words of men. Both have a human nature and a divine nature.
Peter Kreeft
#31. Learn to write by doing it. Read widely and wisely. Increase your word power. Find your own individual voice though practicing constantly. Go through the world with your eyes and ears open and learn to express that experience in words.
P.D. James
#32. The mind of a generation is its speech. A writer makes aspects of that speech enduring by putting them in print. He whittles at the words and phrases of today and makes of them forms to set the mind of tomorrow's generation. That's history. A writer who writes straight is the architect of history.
John Dos Passos
#33. Acting and writing go together. Actors write because they love words and becoming other people - we love to escape into other characters.
Susannah York
#34. I love bouncing my words off of someone else's, and the fact that writing a story with someone else guarantees you'll get something you never, ever would have written on your own.
David Levithan
#35. You ought to stop everything and write the sacred-words as its flashes in your mind.
Lailah Gifty Akita
#36. In writing, I want to be remembered for telling good stories in beautiful and powerful language, using the poetry of words to reflect the thematic concerns of compelling stories.
Kim Edwards
#37. What I enjoy most are those times when I get an idea and it just flows - the words coming so fast that I'm scribbling to keep up with my characters. I don't have any writing must-haves; this is a good thing, since I've done a lot of my writing in random places like the playground or the subway.
Leah Cypess
#38. Sometimes my hand starts to burn and I am convinced we are writing the same word at the same moment.
Jonathan Safran Foer
#39. And there he would lie all day long on the lawn brooding presumably over his poetry, till he reminded one of a cat watching birds, when he had found the word, and her husband said, "Poor old Augustus--he's a true poet," which was high praise from her husband.
Virginia Woolf
#40. In a thousand words I can have the Lord's Prayer, the 23rd Psalm, the Hippocratic Oath, a sonnet by Shakespeare, the Preamble to the Constitution, Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and almost all of the Boy Scout Oath. Now exactly what picture were you planning to trade for all that?
Roy H. Williams
#41. Take these words home and think it through;
Or the next rhyme I write might be about you.
Prodigy
#42. When a writer is able to experience the whole range of human emotions, from deep depressions to glorious highs, it creates a whole inventory of feelings and musings from which they can choose and infuse into their words and characters.
David Perry
#43. What is Religion according to you?
"Religion is your idea of leading life, the value you not only hold close to your heart but ones that you practice, the passions in your life, the faith in your ideals, the vision you have for your life and the society around you.
Vishwas Mudagal
#44. My girlfriend does her nails with white-out. When she's asleep, I go over there and write misspelled words on them.
Steven Wright
#45. So difficult it is to show the various meanings and imperfections of words when we have nothing else but words to do it with.
John Locke
#46. The secret to productive goal setting is in establishing clearly defined goals, writing them down and then focusing on them several times a day with words, pictures and emotions as if we've
already achieved them.
Denis Waitley
#47. You cannot be a great writer in a shop where words are sold in tens and twenties.
Rick Aster
#48. When you make a melody that doesn't come with words from the get-go, sometimes you're just thinking about random vowel sounds that go with it - and it's really, really hard to write lyrics that actually obey the vowel sounds.
David Longstreth
#49. So, I started keeping records. Every day I sat down to write, I would note the time I started, the time I stopped, how many words I wrote, and where I was writing on a spreadsheet
Rachel Aaron
#50. Writing is like praying, because you stop all other activities, descend into silence, and listen patiently to the depths of your soul, waiting for true words to come. When they do, you thank God because you know the words are a gift, and you write them down as honestly and cleanly as you can.
Helen Prejean
#51. When I'm having trouble I write by hand. There is some connection between the mind and the fingers that draws out words.
Sophy Burnham
#52. One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.
Jack Kerouac
#53. Well, I am becoming doddering and old but I have - I'm writing two books a year now. It's like 220,000 words or something like finished, and, honest to God, I can't do that. I really do need the help of, you know, other people working with me.
John Sandford
#54. You are writing a gospel, A chapter each day, By the deeds that you do And the words that you say. Men read what you write, Whether faithful or true: Just what is the gospel According to you? - SOURCE UNKNOWN
Warren W. Wiersbe
#55. DYER. No, I am not of your Mind, for the Dialogue was fitted up with too much Facility. Words must be pluckt from Obscurity and nourished with Care, improved with Art and corrected with Application. Labour and Time are the Instruments in the perfection of all Work.
Peter Ackroyd
#56. Writing barely differs from Talking and Reading. It appoints your hand while they engage your mouth and eyes respectively. The trio need the mind to combine sensible words from a meaningful arrangement of the 'simple' A B C to Z.
Olaotan Fawehinmi
#57. How many words a day do I write? Between six and seven thousand. And how many hours does that take? Three on a good day, as high as thirteen on a bad one
John Creasey
#58. The hardest part for me during the creation stage is actually putting words on paper that make sense and tell my story the way I see it. I sometimes feel I am slogging through quicksand when I write.
Linda Conrad
#59. I have no interest in the printed word. I would continue to write if there were no writing and no print. I put my words down for a matter of memory. They are more made to be spoken than to be read.
John Steinbeck
#60. I loved words. I love to sing them and speak them and even now, I must admit, I have fallen into the joy of writing them.
Anne Rice
#61. Writing is a physical act that engages your body and mind. Putting your words to paper makes your ideas real and concrete. It unites body and mind into one (and they are one). Take ownership of your life. Start by taking ownership of your words.
Mike Cernovich
#62. Writing about sex is not as personally revealing as one might think, because like anything else you write about, the words are not the deed. I have not done those words, I have done and felt private things for which words such as "sex" and "lust" are only poor apologies.
Doreen Baingana
#63. I'm just very careful with my words when I write. Obsessively careful. I'm the sort of person who worries about the difference between "slim" and "slender.
Patrick Rothfuss
#64. Don't write what you know - what you know may bore you, and thus bore your readers. Write about what interests you - and interests you deeply - and your readers will catch fire at your words.
Valerie Sherwood
#65. Faithfulness to the past can be a kind of death above ground. Writing of the past is a resurrection; the past then lives in your words and you are free.
Jessamyn West
#66. My writing legacy would be my true depiction of life; exploring the entire colorful spectrum of people, both good and bad, capturing it in words and exposing it to all cultures in a respectful manner - In a way that would stand the test of time.
Diane Martin
#67. Maybe the true purpose of my life is for my body, my sensations and my thoughts to become writing, in other words, something intelligible and universal, causing my existence to merge into the lives and heads of other people.
Annie Ernaux
#68. And what is wrong with playing with words? Words love to be played with, just like children or kittens do!
David Almond
#69. A story rises from the springs of creation, from the pure will to be; it tells itself; I takes its own course, finds its own way, its own words; and the writer's job is to be its medium.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#70. I didn't come in and say: "I'm a singer." I came into the band as a second guitar player and a vocalist, but not the songwriter. I had been writing poetry for years, so I sort of had the nature of the words. I felt like no one else could sing my lyrics, so I took a crack at it.
Paul Banks
#71. It is the melody and the rhythm that are by far the most important and then words and imagery and stuff, story bits will start to stick to a melody and that is the way I write.
Matt Berninger
#72. You must be able to write. You must have a sense of form, of pattern, of design. You must have a respect for and a mastery over words.
Ngaio Marsh
#73. Write 1000 words a day. That's only about four pages, but force yourself to do it. Put your finger down your throat and throw up. That's what writing's all about.
Ray Bradbury
#74. He was intrigued by the power of words, not the literary words that filled the books in the library but the sharp, staccato words that went into the writing of news stories. Words that went for the jugular. Active verbs that danced and raced on the page.
Robert Cormier
#75. 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
#76. But I liked the writing better. I could make it look beautiful. I could keep it. The spoken words just went out like the wind, and you always had to say them all over again to keep them alive. But the writing stayed, and you could learn to make it better. More beautiful.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#77. 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
#78. As dawn leaks into the sky it edits out the stars like excess punctuation marks, deleting asterisks and periods, commas, and semi-colons, leaving only unhinged thoughts rotating and pivoting, and unsecured words.
Ann Zwinger
#79. It's very weird to write a song in your apartment and then realize that this random person knows all the words to it.
Toby Lightman
#80. Language dazzles and deceives because it is masked by faces, because we see it emerging from the lips, because lips please and eyes beguile. But words on paper, black on white, reveal the naked soul.
Guy De Maupassant
#81. I have to resort to email, and email is not enough. I am starting to get tired of relying on words. They are full of meaning, yes, but they lack sensation. Writing to her is not the same as seeing her face as she listens. Hearing back from her is not the same as hearing her voice.
David Levithan
#82. I'd hear a tune in my head and the words would come. And then, very suddenly it just stopped. It seemed too stilted to try and learn how to write a song, to go to round robins and to learn things from other people on how to write a song. So I just stopped and did other things.
Joan Baez
#83. Poetry aims for an economy of truth - loose and useless words bust be discarded, and I found that these loose and useless words were not separate from loose and useless thoughts. Poetry was not simply the transcription of notions - beautiful writing rarely is.
Ta-Nehisi Coates
#84. The way I write is this: I write about a thousand words a day, a little bit more. The next morning, I read those thousand words and cursorily edit that. Then I write the next thousand. I do that all the way to the end of the book and then I reread the book quite a few times, editing as go through.
Walter Mosley
#85. To care about words, to have a stake in what is written, to believe in the power of books - this overwhelms the rest, and beside it one's life becomes very small.
Paul Auster
#86. I try not to be overly literal. When I'm writing songs, I write down a lot of words, and then I try to simplify it. I like to give people hints or words that make visual pictures for them.
Neko Case
#87. I think film writing, you're thinking in pictures, and stage writing, you're thinking in dialogue. In film writing, it's also, you only get so many words, so everything has to earn its place in a really economical way. I think for stage writing, you have more leeway.
Zoe Kazan
#88. I'm really such a bumbler! Writing fiction is like arranging furniture in a dark room. I can't see what I'm doing. I grope for the right words. I bump against the wrong words and stumble and stub my toe and curse and keep trying to guess what belongs in the space.
Joanna Scott
#89. Never write when you are not in the mood; when you are not feeling it. If the words do not flow freely, and come to you almost magically, then put it down and do not force yourself to write in the book, or it will reflect in your writing and it will be terribly obvious.
Wayne Hoss
#90. For me, while writing I am an engineer, so if I decide to change the format, I want to add a section, to move a section, reorganize the section, anything I want to do, I just boot words, and I do what I want to do. So, I feel completely empowered when I'm a writer.
Guy Kawasaki
#91. I find myself often moved to tears by what is being written in front of me. Sometimes, I just sit on the couch and write the words down and cry because the beauty of the thoughts and how exquisitely they are being expressed.
Neale Donald Walsch
#92. i am infinitely yearning
brimming
and overflowing
in words
i discover
it's another way
for me
to be in tears.
Sanober Khan
#93. All of us possess a reading vocabulary as big as a lake but draw from a writing vocabulary as small as a pond. The good news is that the acts of searching and gathering always expand the number of usable words.
Roy Peter Clark
#94. After writing a novel, what is there to say? If a novelist could say it in a maxim, they wouldn't need 120,000 words, several years and sundry characters, plots and subplots, and so on. I'd much rather listen always.
Richard Flanagan
#95. But the commission is now. The time to speak is when the Spirit of God boils the message so hot within you that it must come out. The time to write is when God Almighty presses his thumb against your heart and forces the words out like a steaming geyser.
Eric Ludy
#96. Writing without words? Its not easy, I tell you! I stab the pen into my heart and let the blood flow. No more ink, no more words, no more b.s. Just me.
Allison Mackie
#97. Words are powerful. Words make a difference. They can create and destroy. They can open doors and close doors. Words can create illusion or magic, love or destruction. ... All those things.
R.M. Engelhardt
#98. He had let me know time after time that he was a thinking man, a man of intellect and wit. Yet one unintended hungry look into my eyes and he betrayed each of his words he had carefully spoken to me. I knew it in that instant. He was a viscerally driven man. And one day, he would possess me.
Coco J. Ginger
#99. Without words, without writing and without books there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity.
Hermann Hesse
#100. I write when the urge hits me, getting the words down as fast as I can type and then I step back from what I just wrote and start a dialectical process where I begin challenging my own writing.
Donald McKay
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