Quotes on Writing

God writes with a pen that never blots, speaks with a tongue that never slips, acts with a hand that never fails

Too many people write their blessings in the sand but engrave their sorrows in marble

You don't find time to write. You make time. It's my job.

Christ is the most unique person of history. No man can write a history of the human race without giving first and foremost place to the penniless Teacher of Nazareth.

Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page a day, it helps. Then when it gets finished, you are always surprised.

I just try to put the thing out and hope somebody will read it. Someone says: 'Whom do you write for?' I reply: 'Do you read me?' If they say 'Yes,' I say, 'Do you like it?' If they say 'No,' then I say, 'I don't write for you.'

Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions.

There are two moments worthwhile in writing, the one when you start and the other when you throw it in the waste-paper basket.

Instead of noting down things I’m unlikely to forget, I will write a poem. Even if I have never written one before and even if I never do so again, I will at least know that I once had the courage to put my feelings into words.

Every man feels that his experience is unlike that of anybody else and therefore he should write it down-- he finds also that everybody else has thought and felt on some points precisely as he has done, and therefore he should write it down.

A man is not learned until he can read, write and swim.

If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster.

A petty reason perhaps why novelists more and more try to keep a distance from journalists is that novelists are trying to write the truth and journalists are trying to write fiction.

The writing is important, but the way you say the line and the pause you give it, the facial expression - all of that is very important.

It is the most fun I’m ever going to have. I love to write. I love it. I mean, there’s nothing in the world I like better, and that includes sex, probably because I’m so very bad at it. It’s the greatest peace when I’m in a scene, and it’s just me and the character, that’s it, that’s where I want to live my life.

Like a pianist runs her fingers over the keys, I'll search my mind for what to say. Now, the poem may want you to write it. And then sometimes you see a situation and think, 'I'd like to write about that.' Those are two different ways of being approached by a poem, or approaching a poem.

Ideas? My head is full of them, one after the other, but they serve no purpose there. They must be put down on paper, one after the other.

There is a problem in America. An Irish or Polish American can write a story and it's an American story. When a Black American writes a story, it's called a Black story. I take exception to that. Every artist has articulated to his own experience. The problem is that some people do not see Blacks as Americans.

I want to write a song for someone who has just fallen in love or someone single and living their live.

The best writing is certainly when you are in love

It's still scary every time I go back to the past. Each morning, my heart catches. When I get there, I remember how the light was, where the draft was coming from, what odors were in the air. When I write, I get all the weeping out.