True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, as those move easiest who have learned to dance. ‘Tis not enough no harshness gives offence. The sound must seem an echo to the sense.
—Alexander Pope (1688–1744) English Poet
To write well consists of continuously making small erosions, wearing away grammar in its established form, current norms of language. It is an act of permanent rebellion and subversion against social environs.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset (1883–1955) Spanish Critic, Journalist, Philosopher
Don’t be too harsh to these poems until they’re typed. I always think typescript lends some sort of certainty: at least, if the things are bad then, they appear to be bad with conviction.
—Dylan Thomas (1914–53) Welsh Poet, Author
For a long time now I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can.
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American Author, Journalist, Short Story Writer
I do not like to write – I like to have written.
—Gloria Steinem (b.1934) American Feminist, Journalist, Social Activist, Political Activist
If I were authorized to address any word directly to our novelists, I should say: Do not trouble yourself about standards or ideals, but try to be faithful and natural.
—William Dean Howells (1837–1920) American Novelist, Critic
The hard necessity of bringing the judge on the bench down into the dock has been the peculiar responsibility of the writer in all ages of man.
—Nelson Algren (1909–81) American Novelist, Short Story Writer
All those writers who write about their childhood! Gentle God, if I wrote about mine you wouldn’t sit in the same room with me.
—Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American Humorist, Journalist
You who write, choose a subject suited to your abilities and think long and hard on what your powers are equal to and what they are unable to perform.
—Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus) (65–8 BCE) Roman Poet
Sleep on your writing; take a walk over it; scrutinize it of a morning; review it of an afternoon; digest it after a meal; let it sleep in your drawer a twelvemonth; never venture a whisper about it to your friend, if he be an author especially.
—Amos Bronson Alcott (1799–1888) American Teacher, Writer, Philosopher
The maker of a sentence launches out into the infinite and builds a road into Chaos and old Night, and is followed by those who hear him with something of wild, creative delight.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter—’tis the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
I never know what I think about something until I read what I’ve written on it.
—William Faulkner (1897–1962) American Novelist
It is quite as much of a trade to make a book, as to make a clock.—It requires more than mere genius to be an author.
—Jean de La Bruyere (1645–96) French Satiric Moralist, Author
Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.
—Kahlil Gibran (1883–1931) Lebanese-born American Philosopher, Poet, Painter, Theologian, Sculptor
Having imagination, it takes you an hour to write a paragraph that, if you were unimaginative, would take you only a minute. Or you might not write the paragraph at all.
—Franklin P. Adams (1881–1960) American Columnist, Radio Personality, Author
Good novels are not written by orthodoxy-sniffers, nor by people who are conscience-stricken about their own orthodoxy. Good novels are written by people who are not frightened.
—George Orwell (1903–50) English Novelist, Journalist
The story I am writing exists, written in absolutely perfect fashion, some place, in the air. All I must do is find it, and copy it.
—Jules Renard (1864–1910) French Writer, Diarist
The only end of writing is to enable the readers better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
He is outside of everything, and alien everywhere. He is an aesthetic solitary. His beautiful, light imagination is the wing that on the autumn evening just brushes the dusky window.
—Henry James (1843–1916) American-born British Novelist, Writer
It is impossible to discourage the real writers – they don’t give a damn what you say, they’re going to write.
—Sinclair Lewis (1885–1951) American Novelist, Short-Story Writer
The only reason for being a professional writer is that you can’t help it.
—Leo Rosten (1908–97) Russian-born American Humorist, Teacher, Academic, Short Story Writer
The best style is the style you don’t notice.
—W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) British Novelist, Short-Story Writer, Playwright
Not being boring is quite a challenge.
—Ian McEwan British Novelist, Short-Story Writer
We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American Author, Journalist, Short Story Writer
It has taken me years of struggle, hard work and research to learn to make one simple gesture, and I know enough about the art of writing to realize that it would take as many years of concentrated effort to write one simple, beautiful sentence.
—Isadora Duncan (1877–1927) American Dancer, Choreographer
Every writer is a narcissist. This does not mean that he is vain; it only means that he is hopelessly self-absorbed.
—Leo Rosten (1908–97) Russian-born American Humorist, Teacher, Academic, Short Story Writer
I was in a queer mood, thinking myself very old: but now I am a woman again—as I always am when I write.
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English Novelist
For the creation of a masterwork of literature two powers must concur, the power of the man and the power of the moment, and the man is not enough without the moment.
—Matthew Arnold (1822–88) English Poet, Critic
Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer’s loneliness, but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American Author, Journalist, Short Story Writer
I hold any writer sufficiently justified who is himself in love with his theme.
—Henry James (1843–1916) American-born British Novelist, Writer
There is something about the literary life that repels me, all this desperate building of castles on cobwebs, the long-drawn acrimonious struggle to make something important which we all know will be gone forever in a few years, the miasma of failure which is to me almost as offensive as the cheap gaudiness of popular success.
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) American Novelist
Writing, in any sense that matters, cannot be taught. It can only be learned by each separate one of us in his own way, by the use of his own powers of imagination and perception, the ability to learn the lessons he has set for himself.
—Katherine Anne Porter (1890–1980) American Short-Story Writer, Novelist
It is the little writer rather than the great writer who seems never to quote, and the reason is that he is never really doing anything else.
—Havelock Ellis (1859–1939) British Sexologist, Physician, Social Reformer
Everything which I have created as a poet has had its origin in a frame of mind and a situation in life; I never wrote because I had, as they say, found a good subject.
—Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906) Norwegian Playwright
An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the school-masters of ever afterward.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American Novelist
The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
Writing is hard work and bad for the health.
—E. B. White (1985–99) American Essayist, Humorist
Any man who will look into his heart and honestly write what he sees there, will find plenty of readers.
—E. W. Howe (1853–1937) American Novelist, Editor
Writers are not just people who sit down and write. They hazard themselves. Every time you compose a book your composition of yourself is at stake.
—E. L. Doctorow (b.1931) American Writer, Editor, Academic
By its very looseness, by its way of evoking rather than defining, suggesting rather than saying, English is a magnificent vehicle for emotional poetry.
—Max Beerbohm (1872–1956) British Essayist, Caricaturist, Novelist
For me, writing is the only thing that passes the three tests of metier: (1) when I’m doing it, I don’t feel that I should be doing something else instead; (2) it produces a sense of accomplishment and, once in a while, pride; and (3) it’s frightening.
—Gloria Steinem (b.1934) American Feminist, Journalist, Social Activist, Political Activist
Writing is like getting married. One should never commit oneself until one is amazed at one’s luck.
—Iris Murdoch (1919–99) British Novelist, Playwright, Philosopher
With 60 staring me in the face, I have developed inflammation of the sentence structure and a definite hardening of the paragraphs.
—James Thurber
A perfectly healthy sentence, it is true, is extremely rare. For the most part we miss the hue and fragrance of the thought; as if we could be satisfied with the dews of the morning or evening without their colors, or the heavens without their azure.
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) American Philosopher
I don’t know much about creative writing programs. But they’re not telling the truth if they don’t teach, one, that writing is hard work, and, two, that you have to give up a great deal of life, your personal life, to be a writer.
—Doris Lessing (1919–2013) British Novelist, Poet
In most cases a favorite writer is more with us in his book than he ever could have been in the flesh; since, being a writer, he is one who has studied and perfected this particular mode of personal incarnation, very likely to the detriment of any other. I should like as a matter of curiosity to see and hear for a moment the men whose works I admire; but I should hardly expect to find further intercourse particularly profitable.
—Charles Cooley (1864–1929) American Sociologist
The first essential in writing about anything is that the writer should have no experience of the matter.
—Isadora Duncan (1877–1927) American Dancer, Choreographer
Find out what your hero or heroine wants, and when he or she wakes up in the morning, just follow him or her all day.
—Ray Bradbury (b.1920) American Novelist, Short Story Writer
It is excellent discipline for an author to feel that he must say all that he has to say in the fewest possible words, or his readers is sure to skip them.
—John Ruskin (1819–1900) English Writer, Art Critic