Top 100 Quotes About Writing Simply
#1. Is not anyone with any degree of mental honesty conscious of telling lies all day long, both in talking and writing, simply because lies will fall into artistic shape when truth will not?
George Orwell
#2. Most days, writing simply requires work-ethic, discipline, clarity, focus, time. Other days ... it will demand absolutely everything of you.
Christy Hall
#3. Writing must be a machine for breaking down, that is, allowing the now uncontrolled and uncontrollable reconstitutions of thoughts and expressions. All other kinds of writing simply express.
Kathy Acker
#4. A book is not an example of 'women's writing' simply because it is written by a woman. Writing may become 'women's writing' when it could not have been written by a man.
Rachel Cusk
#5. There always had to be a survivor. Maybe this simply spoke to the optimism of the men writing those screenplays; even with an uncomfortable sci fi plot they had to subconsciously comfort themselves by thinking that at least a hundred people would survive.
Someone has to survive
Chris Dietzel
#6. Semi-facetiously, when people ask me why I write these kinds of stories, I simply say that I was warped as a child. And, there is some truth to that.
Stephen King
#7. Writing across genres has made me more prolific. When one is fighting me or simply not cutting it, I turn to another.
Julianna Baggott
#8. Simply having the courage to say senseless things made me euphoric. I was free, with no need to seek or to give explanations for what I was doing. This freedom lifted me to the heavens - where greater love, one that forgives everything and never allows you to feel abandoned, once again enveloped me.
Paulo Coelho
#9. Much of songwriting is simply a mystery.
Paul Simon
#10. I always wanted to be a writer, but Alan Moore's work and help inspired me to write comics. In some ways the biggest influence on me writing was Punk. There was the idea that you could do something by simply doing it.
Neil Gaiman
#11. A great deal of the bad writing in the world comes simply from writing too quickly. Of course you reply, "I do it to save time". A very good object, no doubt: but what right have you to do it at your friend's expense? Isn't his time as valuable as yours?
Lewis Carroll
#12. I was a Navy officer writing about Navy problems and I simply stole this lovely Army nurse and popped her into a Navy uniform, where she has done very well for herself.
James A. Michener
#13. I'm simply interested in what is going to happen next. I don't think I can control my life or my writing. Every other writer I know feels he is steering himself, and I don't have that feeling. I don't have that sort of control. I'm simply becoming. I'm startled that I became a writer.
Kurt Vonnegut
#14. When I started writing this, I found that I simply couldn't take fantasy seriously, so it became humorous, and continued from there.
Piers Anthony
#15. If money can't be made reporting and writing articles, then professionals simply can't do it anymore. Unless we adopt the position that the amateur blogosphere is really capable of taking on the role that the 'New York Times' and CNN play, then we do need solutions for paying for content.
Douglas Rushkoff
#16. I do believe it is possible to create, even without ever writing a word or painting a picture, by simply molding one's inner life. And that too is a deed.
Etty Hillesum
#17. Writing has become my great joy - I simply love it.
Dawn French
#18. To put it bluntly but fairly, anyone today who doubts that the variety of life on this planet was produced by a process of evolution is simply ignorant - inexcusably ignorant, in a world where three out of four people have learned to read and write.
Daniel Dennett
#19. It is simply wrong to begin with a theme, symbol or other abstract unifying agent, and then try to force characters and events to conform to it.
Thomas Pynchon
#20. When, I want to know, do writers get to simply live their boring lives?
Jonathan Galassi
#21. Writing mysteries lets me get away with murder. I think 'the mystery' may be the greatest form for social criticism, simply because it is pedestrian.
Gregory McDonald
#22. Does any (MFA) program really improve anybody, as much as simply identifying them? And, after identifying them, not ruining them?
Chang-rae Lee
#23. I am simply impressed by the unexpected insights which shower down on me when my job is to imagine, as contrasted with the woodenly familiar ideas which clutter my desk when my job is to tell the truth.
Kurt Vonnegut
#24. Buffon said unreservedly, "Genius is simply patience carried to the extreme." To those who asked how he achieved fame he replied: "By spending forty years of my life bent over my writing desk."
Santiago Ramon Y Cajal
#25. We like people for their qualities, but we love them for their defects." In writing this line I meant to say that we must not simply "accept" imperfection when it is revealed to us - we must celebrate it. This, I assure you, is the true sign of friendship.
Ron Perlman
#26. I wasn't writing stories with the intention of creating a particular collection. I simply wrote stories, and then discovered common themes among a good number of them.
Bonnie Jo Campbell
#27. 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
#28. Once the grammar has been learned, writing is simply talking on paper and in time learning what not to say.
Beryl Bainbridge
#29. It wasn't until I had been writing on and off for maybe ten years that I started to establish any kind of routine, thought I couldn't put a finger on an exact date, and this routine relates simply to the aphorism 'How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.'
Neal Asher
#30. When the writer (or the artist in general) says he has worked without giving any thought to the rules of the process, he simply means he was working without realizing he knew the rules.
Umberto Eco
#31. I am simply of the opinion that you cannot be taught to write. You have to spend a lifetime in love with words.
Craig Claiborne
#32. There was no "decision" per se to re-position myself. I simply decided that I wanted to write a book that would help people influence others.
Guy Kawasaki
#33. 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
#34. From my years of teaching creative writing, I know that new writers take the setting for granted, as simply a place to set the action, but setting is a vital element in fiction writing and deserves serious treatment.
Garry Disher
#35. My writings are an exploration, and I think a lot of writers would tell you this, but in writing, you're not simply putting down things that are already known to you. You're actually discovering in the writing process, you're actually creating knowledge.
Alan Lightman
#36. Yet in our enthusiasm for the idea that everyone should be able to read and write fluently, we may be missing a crucial point: in today's culture, finely honed literacy skills are simply not as important as they once were.
Hugh Mackay
#37. A piece of writing is never good," he told me. "There is simply a moment when it is less bad than before.
Joel Dicker
#38. I've tried to reduce profanity but I reduced so much profanity when writing the book that I'm afraid not much could come out. Perhaps we will have to consider it simply as a profane book and hope that the next book will be less profane or perhaps more sacred.
Ernest Hemingway,
#39. A book is never, ever finished. You simply get to a point where you and your editor are reasonably happy with how it is and you go with that. Left to our own devices, a writer would endlessly fiddle with a book, changing little thing after little thing.
Kimberly Pauley
#40. Your whole life and the story of your journey is the landscape picture on the front of the box of a 1,000 piece puzzle. The pieces are each a small sticky note that ends in mid-sentence. You simply need to figure out where each one starts and ends.
Ashly Lorenzana
#41. Transforming a brand into a socially responsible leader doesn't happen overnight by simply writing new marketing and advertising strategies. It takes effort to identify a vision that your customers will find credible and aligned with their values.
Simon Mainwaring
#42. 82/ The truth is that writing is simply not reliable. You can't count on it to be there just because you've made time for it. In fact, making space might make it disappear.
Kim Addonizio
#43. In 'Pictures from an Institution,' Randall Jarrell was able to transcend the academic novel by simply ignoring it, writing a comedy with no plot at all beyond his own pleasure in language and humanity itself.
Cathleen Schine
#44. Writing [for the novelist] is not an activity, but a condition. That is why one simply can't resume the work when one has a job and a free half-day. Reading is the conveyance of this condition.
Robert Musil
#45. For the writer under Actually Existing Socialism describing sex is a simple matter: he simply does not do it (the describing, I mean, not the sex).
Philip Sington
#46. You should live in a manner that should enable you to devote time to writing and contemplation. As is often said, the writer is at work even when he is simply looking out the window.
F. Sionil Jose
#47. If I had simply wanted to trade on an insult to Islam, I could have done it in a sentence rather than writing a 250,000-word novel, a work of fiction.
Salman Rushdie
#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. To be shockingly original with your first novel, you don't have to discover a new technique: Simply write about people as they are and not as the predominantly liberal and humanist literary establishment believes that they ought to be.
John Braine
#50. You do not need to be writing or painting or sculpting in order to be creative. You must simply create.
David Levithan
#51. With me, a story usually begins with a single idea or mental picture. The writing of the story is simply a matter of working up to that moment, to explain why it happened or what caused it to follow.
William Faulkner
#52. Without fully realizing it, I began writing my first book. It was neither a vocation nor a particular gift that pushed me to write, but quite simply the enigma posed by a man I had no chance of finding again, and by all those questions that would never have an answer.
Patrick Modiano
#53. Oh, I had an idea for a pilot of my own at the time, and then Carl sent me about eight scripts and simply I threw my idea out the window because the writing was just so good.
Dick Van Dyke
#54. Writing isn't necessarily a gift it is a passion. You can write a one page masterpiece to 99 pages of crap. What keeps you coming back is that Zen moment when you enlightened your own self with a few cleverly arranged words and saved yourself a $200 trip to the shrink, by simply buying a #2 pencil.
Shannon L. Alder
#55. I simply get up in the morning and go to work, and I read at night. Like Abe Lincoln. - Saul Bellow
Mason Currey
#56. This manuscript of yours that has just come back from another editor is a precious package. Don't consider it rejected. Consider that you've addressed it 'to the editor who can appreciate my work' and it has simply come back stamped 'Not at this address'. Just keep looking for the right address.
Barbara Kingsolver
#57. I write songs simply because I get a kick out of making them exist. I'm also sort of addicted to the recording studio, and making albums is my idea of fun.
Wooden Wand
#58. Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.
Isaac Asimov
#59. At this stage, my chief professional goal is simply to keep on writing and making a living at it.
Fred Saberhagen
#60. These incidents of answered prayer are not more wonderful or more worthy of record than multitudes the world over could testify to, but they are written and sent out simply and only because I had to write them or disobey God.
Rosalind Goforth
#61. The setting sun threatened to consume me - it could have, you know. It would have been a beautiful death with an honorable eulogy: slain by a magnificent slice of piercing orange energy. I simply turned and walked away; I would live another day.
Chila Woychik
#62. Writing in a journal activates the narrator function of our minds. Studies have suggested that simply writing down our account of a challenging experience can lower physiological reactivity and increase our sense of well-being, even if we never show what we've written to anyone else.
Daniel J. Siegel
#63. True perfection in all things is no longer known or prized - you must write music that is either so simple a coachman could sing it, or so unintelligble that audiences like it simply because no sane person could understand it.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
#64. A mist rises from a nearby mound. It could be me, that mist, or simply the caretaker's mower-dust. If the breeze blows just right, I'll ghost your solid, entwine your hair. Promise me you won't shampoo, but carry me along, tiny dust-particles of me.
Chila Woychik
#65. I write from the place of inquiry. The first draft is a discovery period to see what I know and what I don't know. My task is simply to follow the words. There are surprises along the way. I just have to get it down. Call it the sculptor's clay.
Terry Tempest Williams
#66. One does not travel, any more than one falls in love, to collect material. It is simply part of one's life ...
Evelyn Waugh
#67. I think writer's block is simply the dread that you are going to write something horrible. But as a writer, I believe that if you sit down at the keys long enough, sooner or later something will come out.
Roy Blount Jr.
#68. At the risk of appearing disingenuous, I don't really think of myself as 'writing humor.' I'm simply reporting on the world I observe, which is frequently hilarious.
Richard Russo
#69. It's okay, Ms Rainn, you were simply lost in your imagination.
S.A. Tawks
#70. The major newspapers simply stopped writing about me, and my voice could no longer be heard on radio or television.
Galina Vishnevskaya
#71. Writing a first draft and reminding myself that I'm simply shoveling sand into a box so that later I can build castles.
Shannon Hale
#72. I don't write easily or rapidly. My first draft usually has only a few elements worth keeping. I have to find what those are and build from them and throw out what doesn't work, or what simply is not alive.
Susan Sontag
#73. In the course of writing one historical book or another, it has happened that I could hardly restrain myself from simply copying entire documents. Indeed, I sometimes sank down among the documents and said to myself, I can't improve on these.
Alfred Doblin
#74. I knew that you couldn't make a living simply writing about the outdoors, so I made an effort from the beginning of my freelance career to write about other subjects.
Jon Krakauer
#75. Academics have given up trying to recover an honest picture of the past and have decided that their history-writing should be simply an instrument of moral hand-wringing.
Gordon S. Wood
#76. When you are writing a book, it feels as if you are simply concentrating on the world of the book and that whatever is happening in your personal life is outside the room, as it were. But maybe that's just the way you have to talk to yourself to make it possible.
Salman Rushdie
#77. What I enjoy about reviewing and writing for newspapers and periodicals is simply the chance to talk about all kinds of books and lots of them.
Michael Dirda
#78. One of the qualities essential to writing exciting stories, whether for page or screen, is an ability to abandon one's morality. We simply cannot be good writers and good people. One must be able to access one's darkest self, one's venality and pettiness and murderousness.
Russell Smith
#79. Keep it simple. Trust your imagination. Discover what is unique about your imagination. Don't simply read a story and copy it.
I go into myself. Then I transcribe what visions I have. If those ideas are original, and you are devoted, you will go far.
Clive Barker
#80. 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
#81. Is it hot in the rolling mill? Are the hours long? Is $15 a day not enough? Then escape is easy. Simply throw up your job, spit on your hands, and write another "Rosenkavailer."
H.L. Mencken
#82. Artists are perceptive, but they choose to write songs or make movies or paint pictures rather than simply keeping private diaries.
Jon Pareles
#83. I'm a writer who simply can't know what I'm writing about until the writing lets me discover it. In a sense, my writing process embraces the gapped nature of my memory process, leaping across spaces that represent all I've lost and establishing fresh patterns within all that remains.
Floyd Skloot
#84. Writing is simply another means for truth to escape, besides crawling out the hole it's eaten in the author's belly.
Dianne Kozdrey Bunnell
#85. I read the graffiti written on the walls of my brain. Then I use my writing to give it voice so it won't simply be "whispered in the sounds of silence." (Apologies to Paul Simon)
Dick Peterson
#86. Writing is not hard work, it is simply an obsession ...
Hallie Burnett
#87. My beloved husband goes through radiation, and a book of sonnets is my passionate response. And then after he dies, I write another book of poems as a farewell. The two keywords here are passion and joy. I simply have a passion for writing, and I do it with joy.
Jane Yolen
#88. Writers seldom write the things they think. They simply write the things they think other folks think they think.
Elbert Hubbard
#89. If only I could manage, without annoyance to my family, to get imprisoned for 10 years, "without hard labour," and with the use of books and writing materials, it would be simply delightful!
Lewis Carroll
#90. You have to simply love writing, and you have to remind yourself often that you love it.
Susan Orlean
#91. No one is better than anyone else. Some just simply don't fulfil their potential of being the best they possibly can.
S.A. Tawks
#92. I prefer to think that no writer has got time to be too concerned with style, that he is simply telling this dramatic instance in the most effective way he knows, that the book, the story, creates its own style.
William Faulkner
#93. There is an argument for believing that the entire process of writing a piece of fiction is simply a thinly-controlled and highly-internalised nervous breakdown designed, with a bit of luck, to produce something worthwhile at the end.
David Hewson
#94. Jane Addams, writing about her Twenty Years at Hull House, said, People did not want to hear about simple things. They wanted to hear about great things - simply told.
Fred Rogers
#95. Just as an effective advertisement or page layout includes a lot of white space, a powerful scene requires immense restraint. Show things as simply as possible.
Diana Gabaldon
#97. Readers re-create any story to suit their own needs. They re-clothe the story in their own shirts. Put simply: just as we write the story we need to write, they read the story they need to read.
Jane Yolen
#98. Simply read a child's story that he or she is writing for school, and you will discover some of the inner struggles with which the young person is trying to cope.
John S. Savage
#99. Propaganda has a bad name, but its root meaning is simply to disseminate through a medium, and all writing therefore is propaganda for something. It's a seeding of the self in the consciousness of others.
Elizabeth Drew
#100. It is important for you to have a goal. You simply can't get there if you don't know where you are going. Begin to build in your mind a dream. The write it down and make your goal realistic. Aim high enough that you will have to stretch your ability and your potential to reach it.
Mary Kay Ash
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