Top 100 Writing To Quotes
#1. I was a painter before I was a writer, so I was always a visual artist. And my writing, to me, was always visual.
Peter Landesman
#2. My friend is composing an epic in Byronic stanzas entitled "True History of Autua, Last Moriori" & interrupts my journal writing to ask what rhymes with what: - "Streams of blood"? "Themes of mud"? "Robin Hood"?
David Mitchell
#3. Writing to her from America, her best friend remarked, 'I've stopped reading fiction, I just read about you.
Catherine Bailey
#4. Sometimes I write, but once it's done, I usually find my writing to be so bad that I hide it somewhere and never look at it again.
Gideon Glick
#5. When I wake up in the morning, I need the writing to go to. I begin there. And that's not an accident, I mean, that habit of getting up in the morning and going to my writing first thing.
John Edgar Wideman
#6. But i would love to write something, maybe a book. I want to travel to a small town someday - one with fir trees and snowcapped mountains. Than I would spend an entire winter writing to my heart's content.
Lang Leav
#7. I'm out here to bomb, period. That's what I started for. I didn't start writing to go to Paris, I didn't start writing to do canvases. I started writing to bomb ... destroy all lines.
Skeme
#8. I don't want my writing to be recognized.
Shawn Ryan
#9. I write what I write and I honestly don't care if it gets on or not. I'm writing to see if I can find out some of what I think about any number of situations. I work it out in the writing.
Larry Gelbart
#10. Teaching and writing, to me, is really just seduction; you go to where people are and you find something that they're interested in and you try and use that to convince them that they should be interested in what you have to say.
Lawrence M. Krauss
#12. I have a very hyper-sensitive sister, and when she saw in the papers the next day that I had proclaimed myself the daughter of an immigrant, she didn't like it at all, and was with difficulty deterred from writing to the press that my father might be an immigrant, but not hers.
Margaret Case Harriman
#13. Somebody informed me recently that the key to every art, from writing to gardening to sculpture, is creativity. I beg to differ.
Roy Blount Jr.
#14. Writing to me is a voyage, an odyssey, a discovery, because I'm never certain of precisely what I will find.
Gabriel Fielding
#15. I have the feeling it will influence my future writing to the extent that without any material worries I could develop a greater ease, even lightheartedness, in my writing.
Elfriede Jelinek
#16. No matter how true I believe what I am writing to be, if the reader cannot also participate in that truth, then I have failed.
Madeleine L'Engle
#17. As usual, the note occupied less than a page and included neither salutation nor closing, Uncle Hal's opinion being that since the letter had a direction upon it, the intended recipient was obvious, the seal indicated plainly who had written it, and he did not waste his time in writing to fools.
Diana Gabaldon
#18. Most nonfiction writers have a definitiveness complex. They feel that they are under some obligation - to the subject, to their honor, to the gods of writing - to make their article the last word. It's a commendable impulse, but there is no last word.
William Zinsser
#19. I want my writing to be as clear as water I can see through so that what I experienced is told without my being in any way in the way.
John Cage
#20. When you're speaking or writing to someone, pause and ask yourself, "Is this something I want to create?" If it isn't, change your words. Focus on the positive and talk about the world as you want it to be, not as it is.
Elizabeth Daniels
#21. I peered at his writing, but I could make nothing of it.
Then I saw why, and my soul chilled like marble.
His writing was running left to right. Not the words in reverse order, but the letter themselves. All of it. It was mirror writing- to be read by the Devil.
Theresa Breslin
#22. And maybe these words have become something more than emails; maybe they are a kind of journal. Writing to you is like writing to another piece of myself.
Amy Reed
#23. This is mainly because I spend a lot of time writing and so don't have much time to read; I hate to waste that time reading what may turn out to be junk food for the mind, when there's so much real writing to be read.
John Sladek
#24. I am writing to all the churches to let it be known that I will gladly die for God if only you do not stand in my way ... Let me be food for the wild beasts, for they are my way to God.
Ignatius Of Antioch
#25. When asked what he was fighting for, General Washington, in writing to General Thomas, said the object was 'neither glory nor extent of territory, but a defense of all that is dear and valuable in life.' He must have been an umpire. That's what umpiring is about.
Doug Harvey
#26. Novel writing, to me, is all about language: choosing your words, finding the characters within the words and just really agonizing over every word. It's really crafting this whole piece from nothing.
Jonathan Tropper
#27. I'd say, don't listen to what anyone says: you're good. Go put your anorak on. Get your thick bottle-top specs. Draw your little cartoons and your comics and keep writing to the BBC.
Peter Capaldi
#28. I want my writing to reach people. I don't write for a market. I write from my heart, something that appeals to me. The marketing, segmenting etc., can be done by your publisher, not you.
Ashwin Sanghi
#29. You could be anybody when you're writing. That's the reason that I'm writing: to be anybody. You can put your feet in various shoes and experience anything.
Haruki Murakami
#30. I've always felt so fortunate to have writing to turn to every day. I'm obsessed with it.
Patrick DeWitt
#31. I find it fascinating that Paul [the apostol], writing to the Galatians, responds to the question, "What does it mean to live in Christ?" by saying, "There is no longer Jew or Greek,
there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus."
John Shelby Spong
#32. I must tell you this, Maggie. Your letters are my lifeline. Your threat to stop them terrified me. Never stop writing to me, I implore you.
Theresa Breslin
#33. I know that people look at my life and ask, "How can I achieve some of those things?" So, I suppose in that sense, yes, I'm a role model. But I try to think of myself more as a mentor, as somebody who I hope young people feel comfortable approaching or writing to.
Condoleezza Rice
#34. There is an honourable tradition in British public life that those charged with authority at the top of an organisation should accept responsibility for what happens in that organisation. I am therefore writing to the prime minister today to tender my resignation as chairman of the BBC.
Gavyn Davies
#35. I got into writing to become a 'Star Trek' writer. I was a rabid fan. I had shelves and shelves and shelves of action figures in my bedroom that scared away more dates than I care to admit to.
Bryan Fuller
#36. Writing to me is a deeply personal, even a secret function and when the product I turned loose it is cut off from me and I have no sense of its being mine. Consequently criticism doesn't mean anything to me. As a disciplinary matter, it is too late.
John Steinbeck
#37. That night I sat up writing in my diary writing to Big Me: 'I hope you are alive ' I wrote. 'I hope that I don't die before you are able to read this.
Dan Chaon
#39. I started writing to make sense of the world that exists inside my heart
Judy Croome
#40. [On writing to Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple:] I told her I would play a Venetian blind, dirt on the floor, anything.
Whoopi Goldberg
#41. I wanted to take my writing to another level. I wanted to write stuff that was personal for real. It's one thing to write a lyric that sounds nice in that line - that's not very tricky - but it's a different thing to write something that sounds nice and actually comes from someplace real.
Tove Styrke
#42. I don't want my writing to be so unique that when you apply it to different genres, it seems like the previous show that people know you from.
Shawn Ryan
#44. I really like writing for specific projects. It's a whole different way of writing when you have certain guidelines and a theme you're writing to. It's very inspiring.
Robert Coppola Schwartzman
#45. I've always wanted to be a part of that experience of writing to an audience that is just starting to fall in love with books. When I felt that my writing for adults had become cemented, I decided to write a YA series.
Sarah Mlynowski
#46. I wasn't afraid of being poor; I rather took it for granted. I was good at getting by with very little. I couldn't imagine sacrificing my writing to anything else.
Marge Piercy
#47. Luckily, in my case, I have managed, by writing, to do the one thing that I always wanted to do.
Jonathan Coe
#48. I used to love 'Jeeves And Wooster.' That theme tune was great. I remember writing to them when I was little to get the music so I could learn it on the piano, and they sent me the sheet music.
Lydia Leonard
#49. It would be so simple to allow children, when tired of sitting, to rise, and when tired of writing, to desist, and then their bones would not be twisted.
Maria Montessori
#50. It's absolutely fatal to your writing to think about how your work will be received. It's a betrayal of whatever talent you have.
Nadine Gordimer
#51. I'd gone through the ups and downs and curveballs that life throws at you. I found writing to be very therapeutic and it helped me with a lot of the stuff I was going through.
Jill Hennessy
#52. If you start writing to an audience you're talking down to them. I've never written for any age group, I just write character. If you can capture that you'll get the audiences, and it will be a wide range, as it is for 'Twilight,' it's a pretty wide range.
Melissa Rosenberg
#53. I'm always writing to a younger version of myself, or a young woman who is like I was. I want that girl to know that I really existed and that it all went down that way.
Melissa Febos
#54. Writing to me is like being addicted to heroin ... it's hard and its mean, but you just can't stop.
F.D. Crandall
#56. I think what education gives you is a voice. It gives you a way of talking to a judge. When a policeman pulls you off to the side of the road, you have a voice. When you cross a border, you have a voice. When you are writing to express your opinions, you have a voice.
Richard Rodriguez
#57. I'm a word freak. I like words. I've always compared writing to music. That's the way I feel about good paragraphs. When it really works, it's like music.
Hunter S. Thompson
#58. I cry, sometimes, because I'm not 20 years younger, and I'm not healthy. But if I were, I would even sacrifice my writing to enter politics.
Oriana Fallaci
#59. Introverts often prefer writing to speaking, because writing uses a different neurological pathway in the brain than speaking does.
Adam S. McHugh
#60. Like most kids growing up, I had a very wide interest. I was interested in everything. I tried to take advantage of everything, from the sciences to music to writing to literature.
Michael P. Anderson
#61. Loads of weirdos send me things, like strange bits of leather. And then there was the guy who thought I was having his baby. Apparently, he's been writing to Princess Anne too, so I clearly belong to a good, erm, sub-section of society.
Konnie Huq
#62. You start by writing to live. You end by writing so as not to die.
Carlos Fuentes
#63. Writers are a fascinating breed, because there are so many kinds of them, they are made by so many circumstances, conditions, and mysteries, and there are so many ways for writing to be done.
William, Saroyan
#64. That's what you need for your writing - to learn how to be present, learn how to be calm. So take that nap, do that meditation.
Sandra Cisneros
#65. Music is my one necessary tool. I put on music that fits the mood of what I'm writing, to help me stay in the zone and get the emotional tone right.
Stephenie Meyer
#66. You don't just decide to destroy a person by making up stuff, and no one at 'SNL' is writing to go after someone.
Tina Fey
#67. I don't think Capote loved Smith. But he did make a deep connection. It upset some people, because that had never been the approach to journalistic crime writing, to look into the mind of the killer.
Gerald Clarke
#68. Imaginative writing, to me, is a way of discovering who we are and what we have to contend with; discovering what is out there and also what is not there. It enables me to think and explore and make something new with language while trying to make sense of our lives.
Romesh Gunesekera
#69. I want my writing to bring people not just to think of "trees" as they mostly do now, but of each individual tree, and each kind of tree.
Roger Deakin
#70. You have to hold your audience in writing to the very end-much more than in talking, when people have to be polite and listen to you.
Brenda Ueland
#71. I'm not writing to make anyone's children feel safe.
J.K. Rowling
#72. I would love to spend all my time writing to you; I'd love to share with you all that goes through my mind, all that weighs on my heart, all that gives air to my soul; phantoms of art, dreams that would be so beautiful if they could come true.
Luigi Pirandello
#73. I get a lot of letters from people. They say "I want to be a writer. What should I do?" I tell them to stop writing to me and to get on with it.
Ruth Rendell
#74. One of the things I had to learn as a writer was to trust the act of writing. To put myself in the position of writing to find out what I was writing.
E.L. Doctorow
#75. The answer to all writing, to any career for that matter, is love.
Ray Bradbury
#76. In my experience, cutting back is the crucial act that allows the vitality, precision and emotional heart of a piece of writing to emerge.
Pamela Erens
#77. Writing to me is a way to get your feelings and ideas out. It is something everybody is capable of.
Katherine Powers
#78. I have a couple screenplays that are done, and I'm looking for the right people to help me make them. I do a lot of television writing to develop new ideas for shows.
Jimmi Simpson
#79. Making people laugh is so much more difficult than making them sad. Too much fiction defaults to the somber, the tragic. This is because sad endings are easy in comparison - happy endings aren't at all simple to earn, especially when writing to an audience jaded by them.
Stephen Graham Jones
#80. The bottom line is I'm writing to save the dead. I'm writing to save the people I have lost, some of whose bodies are still walking around.
Dorothy Allison
#81. I think anytime you're writing to the middle grades, you're writing to young readers who are trapped in a number of ways between two worlds: between childhood and adulthood, between their friends and their parents.
Rick Riordan
#82. Let me back up a little and tell you why I prefer writing to real life: You can rewrite. A novel, for example, can be cleaned up, altered, trimmed, improved. Life, on the other hand, is one big messy rough draft.
Harlan Coben
#83. My advice would be to write-never to stop writing, to keep it up all the time, to be painstaking about it, to write until you begin to write.
Gabriel Fielding
#84. That seemed to be, if anything, the power of writing - to hold sway over memory, making it public, keeping it private, possibly, even, keeping it secret from oneself -
Samuel R. Delany
#85. I always used to deny this, but I guess what I'm really saying is that I was writing to shock ... And I dug deep and dredged up all kinds of vile things which fascinated me at the time.
Ian McEwan
#86. If the day gets really bad, I can always pull out fan mail. Who else gets mail where kids write to you and say, 'Dear Mr. Scieszka, we were supposed to write to our favorite author, but Roald Dahl is dead. So I'm writing to you.'
Jon Scieszka
#87. They ask me what I'm writing for - I'm writing to show you what we're fighting for.
Talib Kweli
#88. Develop the skill of writing to avoid errors but if you do make them, don't be demotivated
Bernard Kelvin Clive
#89. It's not like I want to be friends with you now, Frankie. Don't even talk to me, I seriously can't deal with you.
I'm just writing to say I underestimated you. I significantly underestimated you. I don't actually think it is possible to overestimate you. Although you are not a nice person.
E. Lockhart
#90. I've evolved in my writing to tell a more emotional story - my publisher, Random House, has urged that.
Alan Furst
#91. When you're writing fulltime like I am, writing to pay the bills and keep a roof over your head and food on the table, you can't afford to have writer's block.
Brian Keene
#92. I like the performing. And interviews, even. And the stuff that's not sitting in a room by yourself with empty paper. But I never loved writing, to tell you the truth.
Randy Newman
#93. Franz Kafka is an idea person. His books begin and end in ideas. Ideas have always been important to me in my writing. To the point that I have to be careful that they don't take over.
Alan Lightman
#94. I took up writing to escape the drudgery of that every day cubicle kind of war.
Walter Mosley
#95. The pleasure from acting comes from having great writing to work with. If it's well written and the character is interesting, then, as an actor, that's the raw material I need.
Aasif Mandvi
#96. Writing to you is like some embarrassing remake of Waiting For Godot. Why don't you jerk off on paper in my direction, as I've done. I am so unhappy it's amusing.
Maryse Holder
#97. Another thing that's good about writing to describe a situation or a state of consciousness is that you can finally get it right. That was my intention, and that's always interesting.
Richard Hell
#98. Writing to someone is the only way to wait for him without hurting oneself.
Alessandro Baricco
#99. I am not writing to try and convert people to fundamental Christianity. I am just trying to share my experience, strength and hope, that someone who is as messed up and neurotic and scarred and scared can be fully accepted by our dear Lord, no questions asked.
Anne Lamott
#100. I am writing to apply for the position of bookkeeper. Attached, you will find my list of qualifications. I have been keeping books for four years now, and I am never going to give them back.
Joey Comeau
