Category Archives: Quotes about Writing

It’s not wise to violate the rules until you know how to observe them. The poet’s mind is in fact a receptacle for seizing and storing up numberless feelings, phrases, images, which remain there until all the particles which can unite to form a new compound are present together. Genuine poetry can communicate before itContinue reading “Great Writing Quotes by Author T.S. Eliot”

I don’t think there was a particular book that made me want to write. They all did. I always wanted to write. I do write by hand. … it’s a physical thing for me. It’s a bodily thing. It literally has to earn its way through my hand. I love arranging the words and havingContinue reading “Great Writing Quotes by Author Elizabeth Strout”

The one common thread in all of the books that are falling apart on my shelf? Characters – flawed ones with desires and needs who spend most of the story tripping over their weaknesses in an effort to get what they want. Throughout the ages, story has been used to guide and teach, allowing usContinue reading “Great Writing Quotes by Author Becca Puglisi”

Writing is the painting of the voice. The secret of being a bore is to tell everything. The adjective is the enemy of the noun. Variant: The adjective is the enemy of the substantive. … I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue toContinue reading “Great Writing Quotes by Author Voltaire”

Write from what you know into what you don’t know. Write what will stop your breath if you don’t write. … plot, the absolute line between two points which I’ve always despised. Not for literary reasons, but because it takes all hope away. Everyone, real or invented, deserves the open destiny of life. The bestContinue reading “Great Writing Quotes by Author Grace Paley”

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author. Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pocket. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past. LiteratureContinue reading “Great Writing Quotes by Author G.K. Chesterton”

Writing is a completely private act. It’s in a way like play but very serious play, and sometimes I can escape into the fictional world that I’m creating so fully as to see hours go by without my noticing it. I think that kind of suspension of time and that mindfulness is a real gift.Continue reading “Great Writing Quotes by Author Antonya Nelson”

You don’t write about the horrors of war. No. You write about a kid’s burnt socks lying in the road. If I can tell you the story from beginning to end in five minutes, I’m ready to start writing. I think the definition of an artist is not necessarily tied into excellence or talent; anContinue reading “Great Writing Quotes by Author Richard Price”

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. Some say life is the thing, but I prefer reading. To say that Agatha Christie’s characters are cardboard cut-outs is anContinue reading “Great Writing Quotes by Author Ruth Rendell”

You do an awful lot of bad writing in order to do any good writing. Incredibly bad. I think it would be very interesting to make a collection of some of the worst writing by good writers. In my writing I am acting as a map maker, an explorer of psychic areas, a cosmonaut ofContinue reading “Great Writing Quotes by Author William S. Burroughs”