Top 100 Quotes About Writing On Paper
#1. Often I have the impression that I am writing on paper that is already browning in the licks of the flames.
Ernst Junger
#2. In my head, I wanted to be Madonna, but the music I was writing on paper was not what you'd choreograph dancers in costumes to. It was more coffee-house stuff.
Bonnie McKee
#3. 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
#4. 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
#5. It's hard to explain how this works, and I admit that it's fairly implausible or untenable as a way of life, but that seems to be how I go about my days: peaceably in person, fiercely on paper.
Katie Roiphe
#6. Keep writing. It doesn't have to be anything fancy. Put some words on paper. You never know what will happen.
L.T. Brooks
#7. 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
#8. The story unfolded quickly as I typed, in a way I was becoming familiar with. There was something about putting the truth on paper, bringing facts into the light of day where everyone could look at them, that made my fingers move faster -- it was becoming one of my favorite sensations on earth.
Gwenda Bond
#10. Everybody should write a book whether you get it published or not because the experience of sort of taking it all and throwing it down on paper is unbelievably cathartic.
Gary Dell'Abate
#11. The lines gradually become their own demiurges and, like some witless yet miraculous participant, I witness the birth on paper of sentences that have eluded my will and appear in spite of me on the sheet, teaching me something that I neither knew nor thought I might want to know.
Muriel Barbery
#12. Some minds are made of blotting-paper: you can write nothing on them distinctly. They swallow the ink, and you find a large spot.
Augustus William Hare
#13. Not intending to be funny: I sit at the keyboard, put my fingers on the keys and go. To me, it's the real secret of writing. Put yourself in front of the screen or the blank sheet of paper and get to work.
Robin Hobb
#14. The best reason for putting anything down on paper is that one may then change it.
Bernard DeVoto
#15. My writing process hasn't changed - it's is the same whether I'm working on a Y.A. novel or, as now, a new novel for adults. A lot of reading, a lot of research if the subject warrants it, a lot of sticky notes and scraps of paper - and get to work.
Kathe Koja
#16. Laughing in my ear is a muse amused by how I paint her whims on paper with silly words.
Richelle E. Goodrich
#17. She would smile and show no surprise, convinced as she was, the same as I, that casual meetings are apt to be just the opposite, and that people who make dates are the same kind who need lines on their writing paper, or who always squeeze up from the bottom on a tube of toothpaste.
Julio Cortazar
#18. If you turned in a paper with writing on it, you were guaranteed a hook from Jake Epping of the LHS English Department, and if the writing was organized into actual paragraphs, you got at least a B-minus.
Stephen King
#19. I think that perhaps if I had had to slow down the ideas so that I could capture them on paper I might have stifled some of them.
J.K. Rowling
#20. All songs are already perfectly written. It is the writer's job to find it and get it on paper.
Beth Nielsen Chapman
#21. Putting words on paper regularly is part of the necessary discipline of writing. A journal is a great way to do that.
Pearl Cleage
#22. Look for the clutter in your writing and prune it ruthlessly. Be grateful for everything you can throw away. Reexamine each sentence you put on paper. Is every word doing new work? Can any thought be expressed with more economy?
William Zinsser
#23. Everything I write means a lot to me because it is my head on paper.
Mitch Lucker
#24. Once the grammar has been learned, writing is simply talking on paper and in time learning what not to say.
Beryl Bainbridge
#25. 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
#26. Writing is simple. First you have to make sure you have plenty of paper ... sharp pencils ... typewriter ribbon. Then put your belly up to the desk ... roll a sheet of paper into the typewriter ... and stare at it until beads of blood appear on your forehead.
Jeff MacNelly
#27. The story I had written wasn't the creased, stit-smeared paper now sitting in the bottom of the trash can on the street. That page was just a pipeline through which I could transmit my feelings from my minds to his.
Etgar Keret
#28. 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
#29. I got an idea: people like news why don't we write the news down on a piece of paper, and we'll gas them up and drive them to everyone's house. I mean, if you were going to say that now, it doesn't sound like a great idea, because there are other ways you can distribute the news.
Biz Stone
#30. A simple word or phrase on a blank sheet of paper gathers momentum as I wonder at what it could mean, where it could take place, why, and what if? . . . And then, I write.
Tyrean Martinson
#31. When you consider all the writers who never even had a machine. Who would have given an eyeball for a good typewriter. Any typewriter. All the ones who wrote on a matchbook covers. Paper bags. Toilet paper. Who had their writing destroyed by their jailers. Who persisted beyond all odds.
Sam Shepard
#32. Writing isn't letters on paper. It's communication. It's memory.
Isaac Marion
#33. 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
#34. 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
#35. One always has a better book in one's mind than one can manage to get onto paper.
Michael Cunningham
#36. Little notes, scrawled on half-sheets of paper, and letters, when he was away, page after page, intimate, their news. Her voice, echoing through the house, and down the garden, careless and familiar like the writing in the book.
And I had to call him Maxim.
Daphne Du Maurier
#37. Writing is not about self-expression; it is about putting words on paper.
Gordon Lish
#38. What are these things that this houses, Eva?" Rovender picked up a crumbling tome. He handed it to her.
"These are books," Eva said as the yellowed bits of paper flaked away in her hands to rest on the floor. "It's what humans used to put all of their writing in long ago.
Tony DiTerlizzi
#39. It is unclear how much longer people will write on dried and flattened wood. Trees do so much for humans and for our planet that it hardly seems fair to ask them to carry our thoughts as well. From Life from an RNA World: The Ancestor Within.
Michael Yarus
#40. We all write stories in our minds, but only few have the courage to put them on paper.
Sabine Shah
#41. It begins with a character, usually, and once he stands up on his feet and begins to move, all I can do is trot along behind him with a paper and pencil trying to keep up long enough to put down what he says and does.
William Faulkner
#42. Writing doesn't mean necessarily putting words on a sheet of paper. You can write a chapter while walking or eating.
Umberto Eco
#43. I didn't write my speech until the night before, and even then I refused to write it out like I would say it, preferring to keep cribbed notes I could come back to if necessary. I wanted this to feel like a conversation because it was what I wanted to say that mattered, not how it looked on paper.
Corey Taylor
#44. No man would set a word down on paper if he had the courage to live out what he believed in.
Henry Miller
#45. Writing is thought crystalized on a piece of paper, which can then be reviewed.
Tim Ferriss
#46. The letter of application ... should be a masterpiece of fiction, papering over all the cracks. Get it properly typed on decent writing paper. Never let it run over the page, people get bored with reading.
Jilly Cooper
#47. But on paper, things can live forever.
On paper, a butterfly
never dies.
Jacqueline Woodson
#48. The first rule in keeping secrets is nothing on paper: paper can be lost or stolen or simply inherited by the wrong people; if you really want to keep something secret, don't write it down.
Thomas Powers
#49. Writing is work, but it's also a compulsion, and once you get your characters on paper, you can't abandon them. You have to respond to them.
Rosamunde Pilcher
#50. If I'm reading something and a word pops up, or I just catch it, I try to mark it off and then, later, write it down on a piece of paper and add it to my list.
Robert Barry
#51. A tear cringed off his cheek and stained her writing on the paper. He didn't wipe it, men must be honest and transparent, they should never wipe their tears.
Bruce Crown
#52. If the voices in your head make you cry, you're a lunatic. Put their words on paper, and you're a writer.
D. VonThaer
#53. The exact same text was slightly different to read when viewed on the printed pages rather than on the word processor's screen. The feel of the words he chose would change depending on whether he was writing them on paper in pencil or typing them on the keyboard. It was imperative to do both.
Haruki Murakami
#54. I can write anything and just put it in a zine, and then it's out there. It is like blogging but on paper. It is what I started to do before the computers were all popular.
Mark Gonzales
#55. From an author's point of view, the most painful and dangerous weapon ain't no gun or blade, but a piece of paper with the word rejected on it.
Anonymous
#56. Other people are talking about writing books about my life, or about some of the things I've done. I find it strange, but I also feel it's my life and my story, and I guess I better be the one to get it on paper the way it actually happened.
Chris Kyle
#57. That's all any writing could ever be. Words on paper that burn intensely when read and then diminish over time.
Tim Seeley
#58. Most composers and arrangers these days use computer programs and keyboards, but I'm one of those dinosaurs that still writes it down on score paper and still dreams it up in his ear first.
Phil Coulter
#59. Set an intention to heal any unexpressed anger that may be present in your life. Go to a quiet place with pen and paper. Take a few deep breaths. Ask your anger to speak to you. Write down the thoughts and feelings. When you are finished, forgive yourself for holding on to the anger for so long.
Iyanla Vanzant
#60. My life looked good on paper - where, in fact, almost all of it was being lived.
Martin Amis
#61. The worst part of writing fiction is the fear of wasting your life behind a keyboard. The idea that, dying, you'll realize you only lived on paper. Your only adventures were make-believe, and while the world fought and kissed, you sat in some dark room masturbating and making money.
Chuck Palahniuk
#62. By writing out your desires and goals on a piece of paper, you send a red flag to your subconscious mind that these thoughts are far more important
Robin S. Sharma
#63. A writer writes. There are no exceptions to this reality. No excuses. Stop wasting time talking about your stories and get them on paper.
Christy Hall
#64. I remember the absolute joy I used to get out of writing. The purity of imagining something and then putting it down on paper - it was such a pleasure. I read whatever I could get my hands on, from 'Great Expectations' to 'The Thorn Birds.'
Liane Moriarty
#65. I drank in his smell, I'd missed him so much more than I'd realised. Despite dreaming of him every night, besides my secret habit of writing Honour Hussain in curled scripts on every scrap piece of paper, I surprised myself by how much I needed him.
Ruth Ahmed
#66. Don't think and then write it down. Think on paper.
Harry Kemelman
#67. Honesty is easier when you have no face and no real name. And honesty, for me, is very easy on paper.
Katherine Reay
#68. The moment a man sets his thoughts down on paper, however secretly, he is in a sense writing for publication.
Raymond Chandler
#69. Poor, harmless paper, that might have gone to print a Shakespeare on, and was instead so clumsily defaced with nonsense.
Robert Louis Stevenson
#70. I always felt that nobody was going to understand me, going to understand what I felt about things. I guess that's why I started writing. At least on paper I could put down what I thought.
Truman Capote
#71. I remember writing a paper on human evolution in 1944, and I simply left Piltdown out. You could make sense of human evolution if you didn't try to put Piltdown into it.
Sherwood Washburn
#72. This is our skin and nobody has the right to crumple us like a paper only to find another skin to write on, and then another, ruining people like they're pages, like they are somehow replaceable. Because that will only leave our delicate and fragile selves into a tattered mess.
Heema Shirvaikar
#73. The personal screenplay- where you dive into the terrifying depths of your soul, unearth the most intimate details about yourself, and put it on paper for the world to see. Proceed with caution, for madness lies ahead.
A.D. Posey
#74. When that little clock on my wall says "Olaotan! Olaotan!! Olaotan!!! It's half past time to write", I only have three things at my disposal: A pen, A piece of paper, and a crowded mind.
Olaotan Fawehinmi
#76. Selecting the paper for your letterhead has more variables than you might think. Normal writing or computer printing paper is too light and poor quality to be used for letterhead. Using too heavy of a paper comes off as being ridged and over spending on a basic supply.
Mitch Stephen
#77. Write without fear and put down on your paper what you think, without thinking of what you must say
Louisa Catherine Adams
#78. The worst thing you can do is censor yourself as the pencil hits the paper. You must not edit until you get it all on paper. If you can put everything down, stream-of-consciousness, you'll do yourself a service.
Stephen Sondheim
#79. I started out when I was 29 - too young to write novels. I was broke. I was on unemployment insurance. I was supposed to be writing a Ph.D. dissertation, so I had a typewriter and a lot of paper.
Alan Furst
#80. I write my novels longhand. I love the feeling of writing; I love to see pen on paper. It feels more creative than typing, and it's a more visual process for me - I can picture the entire scene in my head and am merely writing what I see.
Cecelia Ahern
#81. In the back of my mind was the constant hankering, almost yearning, to write but something always stopped me in my tracks. Or if I did find my way to put a pen to paper or finger on a keyboard I'd give up after a few minutes. I'd find other things to do: Anything but writing.
Mary Garden
#82. Learn how to meditate on paper. Drawing and writing are forms of meditation. Learn how to contemplate works of art. Learn how to pray in the streets or in the country. Know how to meditate not only when you have a book in your hand but when you are waiting for a bus or riding in a train.
Thomas Merton
#83. I stroked a big red A on top of his paper. Looked at it for a moment or two, then added a big red +. Because it was good, and because his pain had evoked an emotional reaction in me, his reader. And isn't that what A+ writing is supposed to do? Evoke a response?
Stephen King
#84. No complaining about how hard it is to write, we are all so, so lucky to write, to sit down, inside, and write words on paper. There is no greater freedom, no greater good, nothing that brings more joy.
Isabel Allende
#85. Writing is the dancing of the mind on a stage called paper.
Debasish Mridha
#86. Paper is more patient than people.
Anne Frank
#87. You know your heart and soul are stapled to that manuscript, but what we see are the words on the paper
Teresa Nielsen Haydense
#88. Writing is easy. You only need to stare at a blank piece of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.
Gene Fowler
#89. My worries travel about my head on their well-worn path, and it is a relief to put them on paper.
Mary Ann Shaffer
#90. Time can't be managed. I merely manage activities. Each night, I write down on a sheet of paper a list of the things I have to accomplish the next day. And when I wake up ... I do them.
Earl Nightingale
#91. I want to never settle for anything less than my soul on paper.
Jonathan Culver
#92. A writer is obviously at his most natural and relaxed when he writes in the first person. Writing is a personal transaction between two people, conducted on paper, and the transaction will go well to the extent that it retains its humanity.
William Zinsser
#93. The kind of true-life writing that is fun to read - that makes an ally of the reader - is the kind that you are so nervous about putting down on paper that you lock the Word file with a secret password and encrypt it - and all of it.
Julie Klausner
#94. I'm always writing lyrics. I have so many lyrics on so many stray pieces of paper. Everywhere.
Abbie Cornish
#95. I don't write my standup on paper or anything; but I just organically do it on stage, have an idea, chat it up a little bit. I'm keeping notes. I'm trying to keep up with this world and try to bring out a special every year.
Jim Jefferies
#96. Now everybody who knows anything at all knows perfectly well that even a business letter does not deserve the paper on which it is written unless it contains at least one significant phrase that is worth waking up in the night to remember and think about.
Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
#97. When I'm writing the first draft, I'm writing in a very slovenly way: anything to get the outline of the story on paper.
Pat Barker
#98. When I was speaking about communicating, I meant that the listener - we have to reach the listener; otherwise, of course, you're writing the piece, as I say, only for the satisfaction of seeing it on the paper for yourself, and then it ends right there.
Leo Ornstein
#99. Sometimes in composition class, when I have been confronted by someone who simply cannot get the first word written on paper, I give the following advice: Say your essay into a tape recorder and then write it down.
Maria Mazziotti Gillan
#100. I sometimes wish desperately that I could write like someone else, be someone else. No one particularly. Just if I could put the pen down on paper and suddenly come out in a totally different way.
Harold Pinter
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