Writing As Quotes

#1. I think 'Cool Hand Luke' was probably the first movie in which I was aware of the writing as its own separate thing. It was that speech when the guy reads Paul Newman the riot act. The speech about going in the box.

Brian Helgeland

#2. I say decisively that nothing is so marked in modern writing as the prediction of such ideals in the future combined with the ignoring of them in the past. Anyone

G.K. Chesterton

#3. The idea of directing was something that I always had in the back of my mind, and writing as well. I began to write screenplays when I was in my 20's.

Charles Martin Smith

#4. There is something eternal in the very nature of writing, as is so graphically illustrated by the scriptures themselves. In a very real sense, our properly written histories are a very important part of our family scripture and become a great source of spiritual strength to us and to our posterity

John H. Groberg

#5. I've always though of writing as the opposite of suicide," she said. "That writing was about immortality. Defeating death, or at least forestalling it."
"Like Scheherazade?"
"Yes," she said. "Spinning tales to forestall her execution ...

Ruth Ozeki

#6. I've been writing as usual, but this is not a healthy lifestyle. I tried to change and work during the day, but found that the morning sun saps my energy. So what am I going to do ... ?

Kyousuke Motomi

#7. I use writing as a counselling session - recently I've written a song for Paloma Faith, so after being a singer, I'm happy to keep writing for other people.

Ella Eyre

#8. Always write with passion. Think of writing as a way of bringing all your hopes, dreams, and thoughts to life.

Cherlina Works

#9. One of the greatest things about writing as a profession is that the words of Tolstoy, Chesterton and Dostoyevsky have lived for a hundred years and are just as powerful today. Their words have changed me just as much as the people I actually met.

Philip Yancey

#10. Since I believe that a person's philosophical point of view has little meaning if it is not matched by being and action, I found myself willingly wed to an endless series of unpopular causes, experiences which I feel enriched my writing as much as they depleted other aspects of my life.

Howard Fast

#11. The truth is I'm not really interested in travel writing as it's generally conceived, and even less so in female travel writing.

Robyn Davidson

#12. A life lived as variously as Roger's, and evoked in writing as powerful as his, means that even after death his influence continues to flow outwards. Green Man-like, he appears in unexpected places, speaking in leaves.

Robert Macfarlane

#13. I've been writing as long as I've been able to form words. I never wrote with an idea of publishing anything until I began working on '[To Kill a] Mockingbird'. I think that what went before may have been a rather subconscious form of learning how to write, of training myself.

Harper Lee

#14. Each time you sit down to write, you should cleanse your linguistic palate by reading some things that are vastly unlike what you've been writing. As a warm-up activity, you might try actively imitating a writing style different from your own. It's hard to do and highly unpriming.

Michael Erard

#15. I want prose fiction to be recognized as that, and I'm not interested in writing as it becomes more personal.

John C. Hawkes

#16. She would sit with picture books in her little lap before she even knew how to read, studying the writing as though all the mystery and wonder of the world were contained in the strange, indecipherable symbols.

Molly Ringwald

#17. Now, I think of my writing as having two foundations: entertainment and meaning. The meaning portion is really me trying to answer my questions. The entertainment aspect of it is how I make a story that can make people turn the pages.

Karan Bajaj

#18. I have never thought of writing as a profession. It is a solitary independent activity in which practice can never bestow seniority.

John Berger

#19. I started writing as a child. But I didn't think of myself actually writing until I was in college. And I had gone to Africa as a sophomore or something - no, maybe junior - and wrote a book of poems. And that was my beginning. I published that book.

Alice Walker

#20. Life was not to be sitting in hot amorphic leisure in my backyard idly writing or not writing, as the spirit moved me. It was, instead, running madly, in a crowded schedule, in a squirrel cage of busy people. Working, living, dancing, dreaming, talking, kissing- singing, laughing, learning.

Sylvia Plath

#21. Start [writing] as close to the end as possible.

Kurt Vonnegut

#22. Habits in writing as in life are only useful if they are broken as soon as they cease to be advantageous.

W. Somerset Maugham

#23. Fiction writing was in my blood from a very young age, but I never considered writing as a real career. I thought you had to have some literary pedigree to be a successful author, the son of Hemingway or Fitzgerald.

James Rollins

#24. He would like to be capable of writing as he thinks, quickly, without effort, the word as agile and dynamic as athletes in a race, jumping over hurdles, one after the other, go, go, go, flying towards the finishing post, faster than the disgust limping behind him.

Filippo Bologna

#25. Music is very influential to my writing, as are theater and film.

Jessica Hagedorn

#26. I suppose I often think of my writing as quite impersonal. But it turned out, when my father died, writing was exactly what I wanted to do.

Zadie Smith

#27. Again, the opportunity has come to start off with our best. Make sure all the 365 pages of your book are worth the writing; as well publishing for.

Kaushal Yadav

#28. Nobody else in the world would look at writing as craftsmanship - it's totally this Protestant hardworking ethic. You go into this kind of infinite space of imagination and you fence yourself in with all kinds of laws.

Etgar Keret

#29. Let the pleasure of doodling led us to writing as decoration rather than to the peculiarly abstract sort of representation it inclines towards: the making of signs to look through rather than at.

Robert M. Kaplan

#30. I used to write in bed, starting when I woke up. I believe that creative work comes from our subconscious mind, so I try to keep the gap between sleep and writing as minimal as possible.

Marian Keyes

#31. Write, write, and write some more. Think of writing as a muscle that needs lots of exercise.

Jane Yolen

#32. I am 82 years old. I imagine that I will keep on writing as long as anyone wants to keep reading.

Tony Hillerman

#33. Online is such a brilliant, brilliant way to connect with young readers - even if they just want to tweet, 'Hey, I read your book!' - that, absolutely, I connect with that. But I also treat writing as solitary and keep it to myself as long as I can.

Patrick Ness

#34. Open this notebook every day and write down half a page at the very least. If you have nothing to write down, then at least, following Gogol's advice, write down that today there's nothing to write. Always write with attention and look on writing as a holiday.

Daniil Kharms

#35. I never considered I might make a career out of writing as I was going to school, so when I did turn my attentions that way, I was very ill prepared, having only what I read as a guide, and no formal training whatsoever. I credit that very ignorance with a great deal of my success.

Kim Harrison

#36. In New York I was always so scared of saying that I wrote fiction. It just seemed like, 'Who am I to dare to do that thing here? The epicenter of publishing and writers?' I found all that very intimidating and avoided writing as a response.

Jhumpa Lahiri

#37. Octavia Butler often described herself as an outsider, but within science fiction, she was loved as an insider, someone who was a fan first and came to S.F. writing as an enthusiastic reader.

Karen Joy Fowler

#38. I always loved writing as a tool of expression.

Zoe Lister-Jones

#39. Pico Iyer describes his writing as "intimate letters to a stranger," and I think that is what the writing process is. It begins with a question, and then you follow this path of exploration.

Terry Tempest Williams

#40. I feel like if writers used writing as therapy we'd have a ton of happy writers.

Jennifer Gilmore

#41. Gil Thorpe is a great diversion and is to book writing as poetry is to prose.

Jerry B. Jenkins

#42. I wish to God I knew as much about writing as I did when I was 19. I was absolutely certain about most things then. Also, I suspect, more accurate.

John Steinbeck

#43. I've always thought of my writing as a spiritual practice. But I think that fiction is the most supernatural kind of writing that you can do because of the ways that the real and the unreal weave together to create something that feels more true than anything.

Elizabeth Gilbert

#44. In my writing, as much as I could, I tried to find the good, and praise it.

Alex Haley

#45. Treat your relationship with your writing as an important one.

Winna Efendi

#46. Value the quality of your articles over the number of articles you write. I know a lot of bloggers focus on writing as many articles as possible, but I've realized over the years that you cannot sacrifice quality if you wish to build a loyal following on your blog.

Jeet Banerjee

#47. Joseph Robertson wrote in an essay on punctuation in 1785, "The art of punctuation is of infinite consequence in writing; as it contributes to the perspicuity, and consequently to the beauty, of every composition.

Lynne Truss

#48. In writing, as in life, its not the big words that are the problem its the little minds that read them.

Rassool Jibraeel Snyman

#49. It's my experience that people don't think of fiction writing as being as intellectually serious as other kinds of writing in academia and so without a career as a critic or essayist you can be treated as something of a spiritual medium - a fraud - for "just" writing fiction.

Alexander Chee

#50. Long into my career I harbored a secret sense that thinking and reading and writing, as much as I loved them, did not qualify as real work.

Parker J. Palmer

#51. The most reward experience is having another writer come up to you and say that they started writing because they read my books. That is how writing as a profession continues: readers becomes writers who inspire new readers.

Michael Scott

#52. I feel like I was writing as I was learning to talk. Writing was always a go to form of communication.

Frank Ocean

#53. I don't see writing as a communication of something already discovered, as "truths" already known. Rather, I see writing as a job of experiment. It's like any discovery job; you don't know what's going to happen until you try it.

William Stafford

#54. To me, writing is fun. It doesn't matter what you're writing, as long as you can tell a story.

Stan Lee

#55. Scott took LITERATURE so solemnly. He never understood that it was just writing as well as you can and finishing what you start.

Ernest Hemingway,

#56. For a fight to be productive, or at least relevant, writers should fight over different demands they put upon writing (as an individual, private act) and literature (a network of relations in which we are all involved).

Aleksandar Hemon

#57. I never considered writing as a career - it was always a creative outlet for me and something I just loved to do.

Doreen Cronin

#58. I imagine the proverb about too many cooks spoiling the broth can be applied to writing as well as anything else. The poetical or literary broth is better cooked by one person.

Barbara Pym

#59. It is true that getting into writing as a career can sometimes feel like you are trying to throw ten coins up in the air and have them all land on heads,

Jan Doncom

#60. In writing, as in medicine, there are no short cuts. You need stamina.

Abraham Verghese

#61. Graham Wallas has reminded us that writing as compared with speaking involves an impression at the second remove and reading an impression at the third remove. The voice of a second-rate person is more impressive than the published opinion of superior ability.

Harold Innis

#62. When you say you experience my writing as sacred, what you are touching is the divine place within me that is my mother. Sugar is the temple I built in my obliterated place.

Cheryl Strayed

#63. I've never thought of writing as the mere arrangement of words on the page but the attempted embodiment of a vision; a complex of emotions; raw experience. The effort of memorable art is to evoke in the reader or spectator emotions appropriate to that effort.

Joyce Carol Oates

#64. All you ever really want is a great character and great writing. As an actor, that's the juiciest sandwich you could ever ask for.

Jill Scott

#65. It's hard to say when my interest in writing began, or how. My mother read to my sister and me every night, and we always loved playing make-believe games. I had a well-primed imagination. I didn't start thinking about writing as a serious pursuit, a career I could have, until after college.

Sara Zarr

#66. Writing as a creative art flourishes only when there are no rules. Rules stifle you from entering the silent and forbidden spaces where the core of the story is waiting to be revealed.

Gloria D. Gonsalves

#67. I will direct one day. I need some more life experience before I feel like I can do something like that comfortably. It'd be a feature, it'd be something maybe that I had in writing as well.

Stana Katic

#68. Whether you're keeping a journal or writing as a meditation, it's the same thing. What's important is you're having a relationship with your mind.

Natalie Goldberg

#69. Sometimes I think of writing as becoming this antenna that picks up the vibrations all around me in order to find out how and where next I'll be steered.

Gregory Allen Howard

#70. The best style of writing, as well as the most forcible, is the plainest.

Horace Greeley

#71. Before I published any of my own stories, I read a great many stories by people as passionate about writing as I was, and I learned something from everyone I read
something most important what I should not try to write.

Dorothy Allison

#72. I've always thought of writing as sort of active communication.

Lily King

#73. If you're an actor, if you're not writing as well, or you're not going to improv classes, there are long spurts where you're not physically in production - unless you're Channing Tatum at this moment right now - where you need to be doing something.

Bret Harrison

#74. I did a lot of my writing as though I was an academic, doing some piece of research as perfectly as possible.

A.S. Byatt

#75. You don't write a novel out of sheer pity any more than you blow a safe out of a vague longing to be rich. A certain ruthlessness and a sense of alienation from society is as essential to creative writing as it is to armed robbery.

Nelson Algren

#76. Writing as writing. Writing as rioting. Writing as righting.
On the best days, all three.

Teju Cole

#77. Writing a book is as difficult or as easy as any other job. Everyone's job is difficult. So to fetishize difficulties in writing as something extra-difficult or something very privileged - I don't buy that at all.

Neel Mukherjee

#78. When I was younger, I suppose I was interested in checking out as much about writing as I could: bad, weird, irritating, even things not-to-my-taste. Now I am less open. I will decide after a few pages if I want to stay in the world of the book, and if I don't, I put it down. I have less time left.

Susan Minot

#79. It's surprising that readers don't see challenging writing as morally hazardous, when it might be pushing the same kinds of boundaries as art does.

Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook

#80. I can act ... I do a little writing as well. And I'm good at typing. I'm a creative typist, actually.

Chris Colfer

#81. I was able to not fold and go in a corner because I had my writing as therapy, but also as my tool for struggle.

Edwidge Danticat

#82. I'll probably be writing as long as I'm breathing.

Kris Kristofferson

#83. Writing, as I experience it, means wringing out the heart/mind until it stops lying.

Jennifer Stone

#84. I'm up at 8:30 every morning, and I write from about 9:00 A.M. to 7:00 P.M. - with some breaks, of course. I really try to see writing as a career that I turn off when my husband comes home from work. Otherwise, writing could very easily become all-consuming.

Sarah Mlynowski

#85. Exaggeration in every sense is as essential to newspaper writing as it is to the writing of plays: for the point is to make as much as possible of every occurrence. So that all newspaper writers are, for the sake of their trade, alarmists: this is their way of making themselves interesting.

Arthur Schopenhauer

#86. Only the broken heart has the ghost of a chance to grieve, to forgive, to long, to transform.
Christina Baldwin, author of Life's Companion, Journal Writing as a Spiritual Practice, 1990. Used with author's permission

Judith-Victoria Douglas

#87. Choosing writing as a career, just by itself, is a measure of not being a calculating person.

Justin Cronin

#88. 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

#89. When I'm writing, I separate from everyone. Even my band. I push myself, and I'm alone with my thoughts. Separating from friends and comforts and family lets you think a lot deeper about subject matter. Working alone drives me a little crazy, but it makes the writing as honest as possible.

Vic Fuentes

#90. We can no longer allow them to write just stories and poems; we must teach them the forms of nonfiction writing as well, specifically that of writing on demand.

Troy Hicks

#91. Try to think of writing as a gift - more complexly put: it is the curse and the cure.

Julianna Baggott

#92. I always treated writing as a profession, never as a hobby. If you don't believe in yourself, no one else will.

Laurell K. Hamilton

#93. Learn as much by writing as by reading.
-Lord Acton

N.a.

#94. I come to writing from hearing great stories as a child in Louisiana, where the mark of a person was his or her ability to be a raconteur. I also come to writing as a professional actress whose body has been trained to listen and smell and inhabit characters without judgment.

Rebecca Wells

#95. The day you stop treating your writing as a hobby is the day everyone else does too.

Zachariah Dracoulis

#96. Artists don't talk about art. Artists talk about work. If I have anything to say to young writers, it's stop thinking of writing as art. Think of it as work.

Paddy Chayefsky

#97. I've found myself moved by letters and diaries in archives as well as trashy, summer blockbusters. It's possible to make a connection with any kind of writing - as long as the writing is good.

Sara Sheridan

#98. In writing, as in life, always be true to your character.

Laurie Faria Stolarz

#99. There's surprisingly little difference between writing from a male angle and from a female angle, but I feel more restricted in my language when I'm writing as a male character because males tend to sound less emotionally expressive than females.

Anne Tyler

#100. You can only write regularly if you're willing to write badly. You can't write regularly and well. One should accept bad writing as a way of priming the pump, a warm-up exercise that allows you to write well.

Jennifer Egan