Writing Philosophy Quotes

Writers don't suffer from insanity, they depend upon it!

~ Avijeet Das

A story is a part of the writer's soul, told to the world.

~ T.a. Uner

When I told my teachers I wanted to be a writer, alot of them encouraged me to lower my expectations and to be more realistic. So I rode away on my magical, winged horse, spraying faerie dust behind me, and laughing manically as I went.

~ M.e. Vaughan

When you have something meaningful to say, you lose your desire for much grammar; for only in the incompetence of words does one seek the redeeming power of vocabulary.

~ King Samuel Benson

I enjoy writing historical fiction because it allows me to live more lives than just this one.

~ Karen A. Chase

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

~ Samuel Beckett

Publish. Be damned. Repeat.

~ Tassa Desalada

You can swap the message around, and whatever the particular norm is, or whatever the particular message is, when you put your pet-peeve message before story, odds are you are going to bore the shit out of your reader.

~ Larry Correia

Q: What do you think is magical about fiction?DFW: ... The first line of attack for that question is that there is this existential loneliness in the real world. I don't know what you're thinking or what it's like inside you and you don't know what it's like inside me. In fiction I think we can leap over that wall itself in a certain way... There's another level... A really great piece of fiction for me may or may not take me away and make me forget that I'm sitting in a chair. There's real commercial stuff can do that, and a riveting plot can do that, but it doesn't make me feel less lonely... There's a kind of Ah-ha! Somebody at least for a moment feels about something or sees something the way that I do. It doesn't happen all the time. It's these brief flashes or flames, but I get that sometimes. I feel unalone--intellectually, emotionally, spiritually. I feel human and unalone and that I'm in a deep, significant conversation with another consciousness in fiction and poetry in a way that I don't with other art.

~ David Foster Wallace

Always carry with you a pen and a notebook or a journal to write the thoughts that flashes in a moments.

~ Lailah Giftyakita

If you were to stare at this box of matches, you could extract entire worlds out of it. If you search for tastes in a book, you will certainly find them because it was said: seek and ye shall find. But a critic should not rifle, search. Let him sit back with folded arms, waiting for the book to find him. Talents should not be sought with a microscope, a talent should let people know about itself by striking at all the bells.

~ Witold Gombrowicz

I use only my penned imagination to hold my readers captive.

~ Paul W. Feenstra

I left my novels for better times, when I could dedicate the energy and enjoy the inspiration I feel while planning them; like the most delicious cherries on a cake one left for later so they can be savored to the utmost.

~ Sahara Sanders

When I had my girls, I knew what magic felt like for the first time. I had created people who didn't exist before. Now I write for the same reason. Creating people and their life's stories through my writing is as close to magic as I'll ever get again.

~ Dori Ann Dupré

If your writing fails to move the emotional needle, you are not reaching your readers.

~ Jack R. Cotner

You know, the immortality of the soul, free will and all that -- it's all very amusing to talk about up to the age of twenty-two, but not after that. Then one ought to be giving one's mind to having fun without catching the pox, arranging one's life as comfortably as possible, having a few decent drawings on the wall, and above all writing well. That's the important thing: well-made sentences...and then a few metaphors. Yes, a few metaphors. They embellish a man's existence.

~ Théophile Gautier

Every serious novel is, beyond its immediate thematic preoccupations, a discussion of the craft, a conquest of the form, a conflict with its difficulties and a pursuit of its felicities and beauty.

~ Ralph Ellison

Bringing you closer to the fragile edge of living is the job of a writer.

~ Julie Rodelli

For the writer, the process of writing a novel is like getting an advanced copy of a book you'd really like to read.

~ Brett Armstrong

In the minds of some people, writing is one thing, but thinking is quite another. If they define writing as spelling, the production of sentences with random meanings, and punctuation, then they might have a case. But who would accept such a definition? Writing is the production of meaning. Writing is thinking.

~ George Hillocks Jr.

When you sell a man a book you don’t sell him just 12 ounces of paper and ink and glue—you sell him a whole new life.

~ Christopher Morley