Top 100 Quotes About Writing Often
#1. I devote most of my day to writing, and try to turn out at least four pages a day. As for what triggers the creative process, it's a mystery to me! Characters often just walk on the page, and I wait to see what they do and say while I'm writing them.
Tess Gerritsen
#2. I really do think with my pen, because my head often knows nothing about what my hand is writing.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
#3. Often turn the stile [correct with care], if you expect to write anything worthy of being read twice.
[Lat., Saepe stilum vertas, iterum quae digna legi sint Scripturus.]
Horace
#4. It's often hilarious to me that I'm writing about Tonga or some tropical place and there's a blizzard outside and the cows are on their backs with their hooves in the air.
Tim Cahill
#5. 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
#6. Truth is often better seized and louder in the silence of the written word.
Ina Catrinescu
#7. People are interested in writing, and often there's an unjustifiable sense of people to believe my talking to them for the book is going to accord them any sort of fame. Which it won't. At the same time, they can be more circumspect if they know they're on the record.
Jesse Kellerman
#8. I think I'm able to do so much because writing is what I love to do. So, often when I have free time, I choose to write and edit.
Lauren Oliver
#9. Timid young artists, adding parental fears to their own, often give up their sunny dreams of artistic careers, settling into the twilight world of could-have-beens and regrets.
Julia Cameron
#10. Few people have written significant books about San Francisco. Robert Duncan was, in my opinion, often in the clouds. If he walked the streets a lot he didn't write about as such.
Stephen Vincent Benet
#11. I always plan the whole story in some detail, long before I start writing the actual thing. But even doing that, I find that there is plenty of room for spontaneity. Often the characters will lead the story off in a direction I hadn't originally intended!
Raymond Buckland
#12. 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
#13. 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
#14. I don't spend as much time drawing as I do writing and reading. That's the really work-intensive part. And by the time I have enough material, it's often way past due time to put the comic up, and I'm already behind schedule, and I have to kind of rush it.
Kate Beaton
#15. Very often human beings don't become available for the purposes of art until they have shaken off some of their dogged, self-preserving sanity.
Christopher Morley
#16. An able reader often discovers in other people's writings perfections beyond those that the author put in or perceived, and lends them richer meanings and aspects.
Michel De Montaigne
#17. Often writing is like a struggle to get back to a kind of belated, quite impure virginity.
Harold Brodkey
#18. It often happens that things come into the mind in a more finished form than could have been achieved after much study.
Francois De La Rochefoucauld
#19. 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
#20. Often the simplest song is the hardest to write.
Patti Smith
#21. I often fear to talk so occasionally I express my opinions and my love in writing.
Debasish Mridha
#22. I do a lot of revising. Certain chapters six or seven times. Occasionally you can hit it right the first time. More often, you don't.
John Dos Passos
#23. Grub Street turns out good things almost as often as Parnassus. For if a writer is hard up enough, if he's far down enough (down where I have been and am rising from, I am really saying), he can't afford self-doubt and he can't let other people's opinions, even a father's, keep him from writing.
Wallace Stegner
#24. Write what haunts you. What keeps you up at night. What you are unable to get out of your mind. Sometimes they are the hardest things to write, but those are often the things that are worth investigating by you specifically ...
Edwidge Danticat
#25. 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
#26. I've been writing about Vermont independence for nearly ten years ... and, more often than not, it was for an audience of one.
Thomas Naylor
#27. 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
#28. Good or bad, words have an impact on each of us. As a writer, I can only hope that the effects my words have on others are more often good than bad.
Jessica Lave
#29. I realized, in removing or rewriting these jokes, that often the jokes weren't done or that I was using, for me, the curse words as kind of a crutch. So then I just started writing.
Jim Gaffigan
#30. As for the largest-hearted of us, what is the word we write most often in our cheque-books? Self.
Eden Phillpotts
#31. Newton took no exercise, indulged in no amusements, and worked incessantly, often spending eighteen or nineteen hours out of the twenty-four in writing.
W. W. Rouse Ball
#32. I started in business journalism from the outside, so when I started writing about markets and business, I was struck by the fact that markets seemed to work well even though people are often irrational, lack good information and are not perfect in the way they think about decisions.
James Surowiecki
#33. It's not so much that I write well, I just don't write badly very often and that passes for good on television.
Andy Rooney
#34. I write for the kid in me ... Often when I'm working on a story, I'll find myself laughing at something my characters have done, or even being surprised at where they've taken the story. It's as if they have a life all their own. What I do is create them and then let them go on to entertain me ...
Elvira Woodruff
#35. A lot of my work comes from a place of despair or fear. I often write in order to gain some sort of control over aspects of my life or the world that seem too dark to look at directly.
Lauren Groff
#36. I often find that I rock back and forth with a beat in my head constantly. If i stop rocking, it usually means I've hit a snag in my writing.
Mitch Albom
#37. I often tell people to stop being afraid of writing bad poetry, or bad anything. I think that a lot of times, when people claim that they have writer's block, or that they get stuck, it's just because they're scared of writing bad things.
Sarah Kay
#39. I feel very privileged to get to read and write and not to have to do things that I don't like, and I don't want to give that up. Everything else is just a bonus and often a distraction from the writing, reading, and traveling that gives me the most pleasure.
Pankaj Mishra
#40. I often have to write a hundred pages or more before there's a paragraph that's alive.
Philip Roth
#41. Too often we take notes on writing, we think about writing but never do it. I want you to walk into the heart of the storm, written words dripping off hair, eyelids, hanging from hands.
Natalie Goldberg
#42. Now, one can often get away with playing music by ear when it is not being recorded, but writing is another matter; its mistakes are not forgotten because they are still there to confuse us.
Albert Murray
#43. I get ill when I'm writing because I'm so focused on it, and it can take a year or two. Often, I knock out the first draft very quickly. I can do it in five to six weeks. Then, it takes a year of rewriting it and rewriting it.
Eran Creevy
#44. I feel often very close to the ecstasy and anguish which lie at the very heart of poetry - I am writing a lot.
May Sarton
#45. I've had many students over the years, sometimes even very sophisticated students, who will be writing and will hit a wall. Often I find it's because they're working out of sequence. Maybe some people can do that, but I don't think that's how fiction works. It's a discovery.
T.C. Boyle
#46. Writing on the blog, you want to get attention and make strong claims. In academic work, that often doesn't pay, so sometimes it's a little bit difficult going back and forth to navigate these differences.
Alex Tabarrok
#47. Often I had to imagine the things I needed. I learned very early to read amidst noise. And so I started writing and drawing at an early age.
Gunter Grass
#48. Success consists in felicity of verbal expression, which every so often may result from a quick flash of inspiration but as a rule involves a patient search ... for the sentence in which every word is unalterable.
Italo Calvino
#49. I felt differently about her [Gypsy Rose Lee] during every phase of the research and writing process. Often, I felt incredibly sorry for her; she had an extremely difficult childhood and a complicated 'to say the least' relationship with her family, her mother especially.
Karen Abbott
#50. [Lord Brougham's writings on the bee's cell contain] as striking examples of bad reasoning as are often to be met with in writings related to mathematical subjects.
James Whitbread Lee Glaisher
#51. In writing advertising it must always be kept in mind that the customer often knows more about the goods than the advertising writers because they have had experience in buying them ...
John Wanamaker
#52. The essential key for writing is to write regularly - like it or not - great ideas come often by writing; releasing the subconscious - waiting for inspiration and ideas will not work, but it does help to have a notebook with you all the time for sudden brainstorms or inspiration.
Robert Marc Friedman
#53. I am often asked what I would be doing if I hadn't become a writer. I have long said I would probably be a chef or a garden designer or a decorator, but since recording my own books, there is no doubt in my mind that if the writing doesn't work out, voice work is what I would choose.
Jane Green
#54. Habits like blogging often and regularly, writing down the way you think, being clear about what you think are effective tactics, ignoring the burbling crowd and not eating bacon. All of these are useful habits.
Seth Godin
#55. You learn to do your best writing on story rather than off story. Very often at the beginning of their careers, writers including me do their best dialogue writing off story - the best lines, the best observations - but they haven't got enough to do with the plot to stay in.
Victor Levin
#56. I often think of a poem as a door that opens into a room where I want to go.
Minnie Bruce Pratt
#57. Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay. I'm always irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It is a plunge into reality and it's very shocking to the system.
Flannery O'Connor
#58. Artists don't often know much about writing ... but they don't bray so much about writing as writers do about art.
Matthew Collings
#59. Often you must turn your stylus to erase, if you hope to write anything worth a second reading.
Horace
#60. Quite often when I record a song, writing it and making a demo is the big thing and, after that, I think, how do I actually translate this into real life? A lot of the time I think I can't be bothered.
Mick Jagger
#61. Very often we write down a sentence too early, then another too late; what we have to do is write it down at the proper time, otherwise it's lost.
Thomas Bernhard
#62. The process of writing a book is so removed in my mind from the process of publishing it that I often forget for great stretches that I eventually hope to do the latter.
Karen Joy Fowler
#63. And I am wrong more often than I am writing. And even then, I am often wrong.
Andrea Gibson
#64. I usually write from my own experience, and that's definitely a true statement for me. I think having a song about desiring to live and wanting to get it right, which many of my songs do, often I have to clarify that I haven't figured it out yet.
Jon Foreman
#65. I'm often dismayed by the sludge I see appearing on my screen if I approach writing as a task--the day's work--and not with some enjoyment.
William Zinsser
#66. I've done that quite often, but I've got to be quite honest ... as much as you would want to only do one at a time, sometimes projects overlap and there's nothing you can do. Sometimes you to have begin writing a new project just as you're finishing off another.
Trevor Rabin
#67. There are infinite shades of grey. Writing often appears so black and white.
Rebecca Solnit
#68. Often kids in a computer lab learn about word-processing, but if they want to write an essay, they write it by hand. This is exactly the opposite of what you want them to learn. They're approaching the computer as just another abstract school subject.
Seymour Papert
#69. I've worked with genius performers. Sometimes they created great work with a bad script ... but not often. Play it safe: write well.
Jerry Juhl
#70. Every so often, it's time to make a change with a showrunner; you evaluate the creative and how the show is run, how the writing staff works.
Robert Greenblatt
#71. It is an incredible thing to see how many crazy things get thrown out that people then often write commentaries about how happy they are or how disappointed they are about something that's completely false. But, it's a lot of noise, frankly.
J.J. Abrams
#72. I've often thought I would like to try to write a conventional novel, but I just don't know enough about the real world to write one.
Jim Woodring
#73. An author's strong belief and enthusiasm will affect the writing of the book and often the publisher's commitment to it.
Sterling Lord
#74. When a place comes across vividly in a novel, it's often compared to a character. I can remember writing teachers who encouraged me to treat setting as if it were a character, to give it three dimensions, to make it come alive, jump off the page.
Kaui Hart Hemmings
#75. On the contrary, anyone speaking or writing about concentration camps is still regarded as suspect; and if the speaker has resolutely returned to the world of the living, he himself is often assailed by doubts with regard to his own truthfulness, as though he had mistaken a nightmare for reality.
Hannah Arendt
#76. Often times, I'm surprised by what I'm writing or what I'm playing, and then that inspires me to keep going with it, so it ends up being a very adventurous process.
Marketa Irglova
#77. If you can't give the is-ness of a thing give the not-ness of it! The main thing is to hook up, get the wheels turning, sound off. When your brakes jam, try going in reverse. If often works.
Henry Miller
#78. Abuse is often of service. There is nothing so dangerous to an author as silence.
Samuel Johnson
#79. Often I have to move my body in a certain way, like exercising, to begin to get into the right rhythm for writing a song.
Patty Griffin
#80. Often I'm struck by something that I read; then I go and research it a little more, especially if I begin a poem, and I find out that I need to know more. Then I usually get intrigued and excited about whatever it is I'm writing about.
Pattiann Rogers
#81. I think the biggest challenge I have faced is that I have struggled most of my life with often crippling depression which has sometimes if not keeping me off stage kept me from writing regularly and with any kind of confidence.
Gary Gulman
#82. As an editor, I must often tell writers that their stories "do not fit our present needs." But there are times when I want to reply: "Sir, I would not trust you to write a ransom note."
Richard Conniff
#83. When we are in love, we are convinced nobody else will do. But as time goes, others do do, and often do do, much much better.
Coco J. Ginger
#84. The obscure, unexplainable aspect of the writing process is about how some rhymes appear in your head. It often feels more like tuning in to some kind of channel than composing words in your mind.
Sahara Sanders
#85. Scandal often does as much harm to the listeners as to those who devise it, even if it were to do no other harm than disturb the mind, as it does, and give rise to temptations to speak or write about it to others.
Vincent De Paul
#86. 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
#87. Often during writing, I am compelled by OCD to delete and rewrite a word or sentence over and over again.
Abhijit Naskar
#88. I often wonder if all the writers who are alcoholics drink a lot because they aren't writing. It is not because they are writers that they are drinking, but because they are writers who are not writing.
Natalie Goldberg
#89. The first 13 years of my life, I lived in China. My parents were missionaries there, and I was an only child. Often I felt lonely and out of place. Writing for me became my private place, where no one could come.
Jean Fritz
#90. There is a sort of man who pays no attention to his good actions, but is tormented by his bad ones. This is the type that most often writes about himself.
W. Somerset Maugham
#91. I feel like if people are going to go to the effort to get a stamp and, you know, put it on an envelope that, you know, it's a big effort these days. So I often write back.
Adrian Tomine
#92. A large part of academic community is unthinkingly self-involved, producing reams of sterile writing - often consuming unbelievable amounts of public funds - and serving as an instruction manual for how to chase away readers and ignore historical insights.
Gotz Aly
#93. Well, before writing became all-consuming, I was a quilter, like Hattie and Perilee. I don't do that anymore, but I do knit, garden and watch the birds in my backyard. I also take lots of walks, do yoga and talk my husband into taking me out to dinner as often as possible.
Kirby Larson
#94. I think people who write programs do have at least a glimmer of extra insight into the nature of God ... because creating a program often means that you have to create a small universe
Donald Knuth
#95. There is not much to say about Burrough's writing. It consists of semiliterate ravings by a very sick mind, a kaleidoscope or surrealistic depictions of drug-taking, violent, often misogynistic fantasy, and sexual depravity.
Roger Kimball
#96. Too often do reviewers remind us of the mob of Astrologers, Chaldeans, and Soothsayers gathered before 'the writing on the wall' and unable to read the characters or make known the interpretation.
Charlotte Bronte
#97. Since my woman's world is perceived greatly through the emotions and the senses, I treat it that way in my writing - and am often overweighted with heavy descriptive passages and a kaleidoscope of similes.
Sylvia Plath
#98. As far as I can tell, writing the essays didn't change the way I wrote poetry. Although the essays contain scattered passages that might be called lyrical, they often contain closed statements of what is only suggested in the poetry.
Pattiann Rogers
#99. Because good writing in a TV cartoon is so rare, I think the animation on The Simpsons is often overlooked.
Matt Groening
#100. Since truth is often stranger than fiction, fiction needs to be pretty weird.
Erik Meyer