Quotes on Writing

For poetry was all written before time was, and whenever we are so finely organized that we can penetrate into that region where the air is music, we hear those primal warblings, and attempt to write them down, but we lose ever and anon a word, a verse, and substitute something of our own, and thus miswrite the poem.

Writing poetry is the hard manual labor of the imagination.

Writing poetry is a state of free float.

Poetry is the journal of a sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air.

Anybody can write music of a sort. But touching the public heart is quite another thing.

The moment a man sets his thoughts down on paper, however secretly, he is in a sense writing for publication.

At least half the mystery novels published violate the law that the solution, once revealed, must seem to be inevitable.

Love, Fear, and Esteem, - Write these on three stones.

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

As a musician I tell you that if you were to suppress adultery, fanaticism, crime, evil, the supernatural, there would no longer be the means for writing one note.

Vocations which we wanted to pursue, but didn't, bleed, like colors, on the whole of our existence.

A man without a bias cannot write interesting history - if indeed such a man exists.

To be able to think freely, a man must be certain that no consequence will follow whatever he writes.

Pay no attention to what the critics say; _x000D_ _x000D_ no statue has ever been erected to a critic.

You may translate books of science exactly. ... The beauties of poetry cannot be preserved in any language except that in which it was originally written.

Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.

Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. No man has learned anything rightly, until he knows that every day is Doomsday.

When I am angry I can write, pray, and preach well, for then my whole temperament is quickened, my understanding sharpened, and all mundane vexations and temptations depart.

My face responds without authorization from my brain, so the resulting smile feels like the biggest, most unguarded, goofiest smile I’ve ever unleashed in my entire life. I didn’t even know my face could do this. It’s like there were hidden zippers in my cheeks. Jesus. This must be what feelings are. This is why people write poems! I get it now. I get it, and I want more.

How wonderful it is to be able to write someone a letter! To feel like conveying your thoughts to a person, to sit at your desk and pick up a pen, to put your thoughts into words like this is truly marvelous.

I’m an author. We don’t want to lead. We don’t need to follow. We stay home and make stuff up and write it down and send it out into the world, and get inside people’s heads. Perhaps we change the world and perhaps we don’t. We never know. We just make stuff up.