Quotes About Writing Twain

#1. Men write many fine and plausible arguments in support of monarchy, but the fact remains that where every man has a voice, brutal laws are impossible

Mark Twain

#2. When an honest writer discovers an imposition it is his simple duty to strip it bare and hurl it down from its place of honor, no matter who suffers by it; any other course would render him unworthy of the public confidence.

Mark Twain

#3. That cat will write her autograph all over your leg if you let her.

Mark Twain

#4. If we learned to walk and talk the way we learn to read and write, everyone would limp and stutter.

Mark Twain

#5. The writing begins when you've finished. Only then do you know what you're trying to say.

Mark Twain

#6. Use the right word, not its second cousin.

Mark Twain

#7. If I'd seen a playwright ever write an' play at the same time, I'd have given 'em more of a chance at cards. Can I get an 'amen?'

Mark Twain

#8. Writing is very much a playground - an artistic playground. It's the most fun thing I do.

Shania Twain

#9. It is a good thing to write for the amusement of the public, but it is a far higher and nobler thing to write for their instruction, their profit, their actual and tangible benefit.

Mark Twain

#10. I've always liked the classic "young adult" writers like Mark Twain, Jack London, Roald Dahl, Charles Dickens. They write so clearly, and they know how to entertain.

Arthur Bradford

#11. There ain't nothing more to write about and I'm rotten glad of it, because if I'd know'd what trouble it was to make a book, I wouldn't a tackled it.

Mark Twain

#12. The trade of critic, in literature, music, and the drama, is the most degraded of all trades.

Mark Twain

#13. But really, it was reading that led me to writing. And in particular, reading the American classics like Twain who taught me at an early age that ordinary lives of ordinary people can be made into high art.

Russell Banks

#14. We write frankly and freely, but then we modify before we print.

Mark Twain

#15. The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter. 'tis the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.

Mark Twain

#16. Perfect grammar
persistent, continuous, sustained
is the fourth dimension, so to speak: many have sought it, but none has found it.

Mark Twain

#17. When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don't mean utterly, but kill most of them
then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are far apart.

Mark Twain

#18. Don't say the old lady screamed. Bring her on and let her scream.

Mark Twain

#19. I have thought many times since that if poets when they get discouraged would blow their brains out, they could write very much better when they got well.

Mark Twain

#20. A young mark twain on the make: I can't turn in inkstand into Aladdin's lamp.

H.W. Brands

#21. Experience of life (not of books) is the only capital usable in such a book as you have attempted; one can make no judicious use of this capital while it is new.

Mark Twain

#22. In Austria an editor who can write well is valuable, but he is not likely to remain so unless he can handle a sabre with charm.

Mark Twain

#23. Don't look at the world with your hands in your pockets. To write about it you have to reach out and touch it.

Mark Twain

#24. When you catch an adjective, kill it.

Mark Twain

#25. The time to begin writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction. By that time you begin to clearly and logically perceive what it is you really want to say.

Mark Twain

#26. Eschew surplusage.

Mark Twain

#27. Perhaps no poet is a conscious plagiarist, but there seems to be warrant for suspecting that there is no poet who is not at one time or another an unconscious one.

Mark Twain

#28. It is no use to keep private information which you can't show off.

Mark Twain

#29. I suppose most writers are following Twain's advice to tackle what they know, and my own readings habits drew me to writers who seemed to be writing honestly from their own experiences, whether they presented it in the guise of fiction or not.

Kevin Keck

#30. As to the adjective: when in doubt, strike it out.

Mark Twain

#31. The frankest and freest product of the human mind and heart is a love letter; the writer gets his limitless freedom of statement and expression from his sense that no stranger is going to see what he is writing.

Mark Twain

#32. Wit is the sudden marriage of ideas which before their union were not perceived to have any relation.

Mark Twain

#33. T[he rules of writing] require that the episodes in a tale shall be necessary parts of the tale, and shall help to develop it.

Mark Twain

#34. It's really such a personal journey, making a record, but even more so writing the songs.

Shania Twain

#35. One should never use exclamation points in writing. It is like laughing at your own joke.

Mark Twain

#36. Let us guess that whenever we read a sentence & like it, we unconsciously store it away in our model-chamber; & it goes, with the myriad of its fellows, to the building, brick by brick, of the eventual edifice which we call our style.

Mark Twain

#37. The dream vocabulary shaves meanings finer and closer than do the world's daytime dictionaries.

Mark Twain

#38. If ever you've been down in the dumps, hear these iconic authors share with you more than their writing wisdom.

Mark Twain

#39. Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words.

Mark Twain

#40. Write what you know.

Mark Twain

#41. LEARN FROM THE MASTERS:
Mark Twain once said, "Show, don't tell." This is an incredibly important lesson for writers to remember; never get such a giant head that you feel entitled to throw around obscure phrases like "Show, don't tell." Thanks for nothing, Mr. Cryptic.

Colin Nissan

#42. If you play Mark Twain and he's not funny, you are definitely not playing Mark Twain. That was the biggest challenge, in some ways. Writing and performing jokes that can come out of that brilliant delivery system he constructed: the friendly, avuncular truth-teller.

Val Kilmer

#43. Writing is the easiest thing in the world ... Just try it sometime. I sit up with a pipe in my mouth and a board on my knees and I scribble away.

Mark Twain

#44. I don't have time to write you a short letter, so I'm writing you a long one instead.

Mark Twain

#45. Substitute 'damn' every time you're inclined to write 'very;' your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.

Mark Twain

#46. For me, all writing
storytelling and style
gets back to the Bible, Twain and Hemingway, and not in that order.

Dennis R. Miller

#47. Mark Twain on George Ade's writing: I have been reading him [Ade] again, and my admiration overflows all limits. How effortless the limning! It is as if the work did itself, without help of the master's hand.

George Ade

#48. A successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it.

Mark Twain

#49. When I want to read something nice, I sit down and write it myself.

Mark Twain

#50. Mark Twain was so good with crowds that he became, in competition with singers and dancers and actors and acrobats, one of the most popular performers of his time. It is so unusual, and so psychologically unlikely, too, for a great writer to be a great performer, too ...

Kurt Vonnegut

#51. I conceive that the right way to write a story for boys is to write so that it will not only interest boys but strongly interest any man who has ever been a boy. That immensely enlarges the audience.

Mark Twain

#52. Experience is an author's most valuable asset; experience is the thing that puts the muscle and the breath and the warm blood into the book he writes.

Mark Twain

#53. I know grammar by ear only, not by note, not by the rules.

Mark Twain

#54. In writing, I shall always confine myself strictly to the truth, except when it is attended with inconvenience.

Mark Twain

#55. The test of any good fiction is that you should care something for the characters; the good to succeed, the bad to fail. The trouble with most fiction is that you want them all to land in hell together, as quickly as possible.

Mark Twain

#56. Whatever you have lived, you can write & by hard work & a genuine apprenticeship, you can learn to write well; but what you have not lived you cannot write, you can only pretend to write it ...

Mark Twain

#57. Well, my book is written-let it go. But if it were only to write over again there wouldn't be so many things left out. They burn in me; and they keep multiplying; but now they can't ever be said. And besides, they would require a library-and a pen warmed up in hell.

Mark Twain

#58. If the writer doesn't sweat, the reader will.

Mark Twain

#59. Which is him? The grammar was faulty, maybe, but we could not know, then, that it would go in a book someday.

Mark Twain

#60. Tout les jours you are coming some fresh game or other on me, mais vous ne pouvez pas play this savon dodge on me twice!

Mark Twain

#61. If Mark Twain had had Twitter, he would have been amazing at it. But he probably wouldn't have gotten around to writing Huckleberry Finn.

Andy Borowitz

#62. I don't speak German well but several experts have assured me that I write it like an angel. Maybe so, maybe so- I don't know. I've not yet made any acquaintances among the angels. That comes later, whenever it please the Deity. I'm not in any hurry.

Mark Twain

#63. Tom found himself writing "BECKY" in the sand with his big toe; he scratched it out, and was angry with himself for his weakness. But he wrote it again, nevertheless; he could not help it.

Mark Twain

#64. Every man feels that his experience is unlike that of anybody else and therefore he should write it down
he finds also that everybody else has thought and felt on some points precisely as he has done, and therefore he should write it down.

Mark Twain

#65. Use what you stand for and what you oppose as a foundation to write great content that resonates with readers and creates a ripple effect.

Mark Twain

#66. God only exhibits his thunder and lightning at intervals, and so they always command attention.

Mark Twain

#67. Write without pay until somebody offers to pay.

Mark Twain

#68. No one can write perfect English and keep it up through a stretch of ten chapters. It has never been done.

Mark Twain