Quotes on writing are as varied as they are insightful. A good quote on writing packs more in a few words than most of us say in a thousand. If I had to choose one indispensable quotation, I guess it would be William Faulkner's entire Nobel Prize acceptance speech in 1950. I rather suspect I am not alone in that sentiment. On the other hand, the best quotes on writing I know not only come from obscure names, but are unlikely to be seen in most other compilations. You won't come across any quotes from Lord Byron here. Many of these are diamonds in the rough. I have separated them into unique categories.
THE WRITING PROCESS
As soon as you connect with your true subject, you will write. - Joyce Carol Oates
There are few experiences quite so satisfactory as getting a good idea.....You're pleased with it and feel good. It may not be right, but at least you can try it out.-Lancelot L. White
The faster I write the better my output. If I'm going slow, I'm in trouble. It means I'm pushing the words, instead of being pulled by them.-Raymond Chandler
It's never perfect when I write it down the first time, or the second time, or the fifth time. But it always gets better as I go over it and over it.-Jane Yolen
No iron can pierce the heart with such force as a period put just at the right place.-Isaac Babel
Writing becomes real when it has an audience.-Tom Liner
THE BASIC ELEMENTS OF WRITING
Easy writing makes hard reading.-Ernest Hemingway
A writer is not someone who expresses his thoughts, his passion, or his imagination in sentences but someone who thinks sentences.-Roland Barthes
If any man wishes to write in a clear style, let him first be clear in his thoughts.-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The paragraph [is] a mini-essay; it is also a maxi-sentence.-Donald Hall
I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paperwork.-Peter De Vries
SEARCHING AND RESEARCHING
Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.-Samuel Johnson
Research is to see what everybody else has seen, and to think what nobody else has thought.-Albert Szent-Gyorgyi
Everyone has a right to an opinion, but no one has a right to be wrong about the facts.-Anonymous
Adam was the only man who, when he said a good thing, knew that nobody had said it before him.-Mark Twain
FORMS OF WRITING
Personal Writing
Be yourself. Above all, let who you are, what you are, what you believe shine through every sentence you write, every piece you finish.-John Jakes
Writing is not apart from living. Writing is a kind of double living.-Catherine Drinker Brown
A journal should, in fact, be clear proof that being you isn't boring, even on those days when we shrug and say, 'Nothing happened.'-Peter Stillman
I don't pick subjects so much as they pick me. Ideas seem to present themselves to me all the time.-Andy Rooney
Reflective Writing
I think somehow, we learn who we really are and then live with that decision.-Eleanor Roosevelt
Academic Writing
Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood.-Madame Curie
WRITING ABOUT LITERATURE
The books that help you the most are those that make you think the most.-Theodore Parker
There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts.-Charles Dickens
READING AND STUDY SKILLS
Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.-Richard Steele
Words are one of our chief means of adjusting to all the situations of life. The better control we have over words, the more successful our adjustment is likely to be.-Bergen Evans
A good listener is not only popular everywhere, but after awhile he gets to know something.-Wilson Mizner
The man who has ceased to learn ought not to be allowed to wander around loose.-M.M. Coady
To treat your facts with imagination is one thing; to imagine your facts is another.-John Burroughs
And Finally, the rest are simply gems I couldn't leave out:
There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.-Walter Wellesley "Red" Smith
The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say.-Anais Nin
Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.-E.L. Doctorow
And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.-Sylvia Plath
I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of hunger for life that gnaws in us all.-Richard Wright
I try to leave out the parts that people skip.-Elmore Leonard
If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written, then you must write it.-Toni Morrison
WORKS CITED
Sebranek, Peter, and Verne Meyer, Dave Kemper. Writers Inc. Lexington, Mass: D.C. Heath and Company,1996