Category Archives: Quotes about Writing

From the moment I start a new novel, life’s just one endless torture. The first few chapters may go fairly well and I may feel there’s still a chance to prove my worth, but that feeling soon disappears and every day I feel less and less satisfied. One forges one’s style on the terrible anvilContinue reading “Great Writing Quotes by Author Emile Zola”

Any writer worth his salt writes to please himself…It’s a self-exploratory operation that is endless. An exorcism of not necessarily his demon, but of his divine discontent. People who write for reward by way of recognition or monetary gain don’t know what they’re doing. They’re in the category of those who write; they are notContinue reading “Great Writing Quotes by Author Harper Lee”

Modesty and conscientiousness receive their reward only in novels. In life they are exploited and then shoved aside. We have so much to say, and we shall never say it. This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to thoseContinue reading “Great Writing Quotes by Author Erich Maria Remarque”

People who think that grammar is just a collection of rules and restrictions are wrong. If you get to like it, grammar reveals the hidden meaning of history, hides disorder and abandonment, links things and brings opposites together. Grammar is a wonderful way of organizing the world how you’d like it to be. Grammar isContinue reading “Great Writing Quotes by Author Delphine de Vigan”

I write to give myself strength. I write to be the characters that I am not. I write to explore all the things I’m afraid of. You take people, you put them on a journey, you give them peril, you find out who they really are. People love a happy ending. So every episode, IContinue reading “Great Writing Quotes by Screenwriter Joss Whedon”

…children become readers before they can read. They become hooked on books because they were read aloud to as a child. I try to have reasonably happy endings because I would hate any child to be cast down in gloom and despair; I want to show them you can find a way out of it.Continue reading “Great Writing Quotes by Author Jacqueline Wilson”

Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with it is a toy and an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, then it becomes a master, then it becomes a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster and fling him toContinue reading “Great Writing Quotes by Author Winston S. Churchill”

A book is a heart that only beats in the chest of another. The object we call a book is not the real book, but its potential, like a musical score or seed. It exists fully only in the act of being read; and its real home is inside the head of the reader, whereContinue reading “Great Writing Quotes by Author Rebecca Solnit”

Fantasy is hardly an escape from reality. It’s a way of understanding it. …Writings can be stolen, or changed, or used for evil purposes. But isn’t the risk worth taking? The more people who share knowledge, the greater safeguard for it. Isn’t there more danger in ignorance than knowledge? I decided that adventure was theContinue reading “Great Writing Quotes by Author Lloyd Alexander”

It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. …when a sentence isContinue reading “Great Writing Quotes by William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White”