Writing Quotes

This is what is behind the special relationship between tale and travel, and, perhaps, the reason why narrative writing is so closely bound up with walking. To write is to carve a new path through the terrain of the imagination, or to point out new features on a familiar route. To read is to travel through that terrain that the author as guide - a guide one may not always agree with our trust, but who can at least be counted upon to take one somewhere. I have have often wished that my sentences could be written out as a single line running into distances so that it would be clear that a sentence is likewise a road and reading is traveling.

~ Rebecca Solnit

F(r)iction is the best of everything we’ve ever loved. F(r)iction is experimental. F(r)iction is strange. F(r)iction pokes the soft spots, touches nerves most would rather remain protected. F(r)iction is secrets and truths and most importantly—stories. F(r)iction is weird, in every respect.

~ Tethered By Letters

The manager of my line told me, You never put anything down except to be read. Every word ever written is written to be read and if some go unread that's only chance, failure, they're like grubs that die without changing.

~ China Miéville

I used to be afraid about what people might say or think after reading what I had written. I am not afraid anymore, because when I write, I am not trying to prove anything to anyone, I am just expressing myself and my opinions. It’s ok if my opinions are different from those of the reader, each of us can have his own opinions. So writing is like talking, if you are afraid of writing, you may end up being afraid of talking

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

I am not a supporter of burning books; but like poison, some books should be kept away from simple minds who can't take in the strong content they provide

~ Bangambiki Habyarimana

Oh, how scary and wonderful it is that words can change our lives simply by being next to each other.

~ Kamand Kojouri

The only end of writing is to enable readers better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.

~ Samuel Johnson

Word porn is the best porn when the imagination is well endowed.

~ Dez Marie

I'll have enough books when they fill my room like the stars fill the sky.

~ E.v. Fairfall

A single poem, alonecan turn tidesscatter galaxiesand burst forth with riversfrom paradise.

~ Sanober Khan

All of us possess a reading vocabulary as big as a lake but draw from a writing vocabulary as small as a pond. The good news is that the acts of searching and gathering always expand the number of usable words.

~ Roy Peter Clark

That’s why people use terms like flow or effortless to describe writing that they regard as really superb. They’re not saying effortless in terms of it didn’t seem like the writer spent any work. It simply requires no effort to read it — the same way listening to an incredible storyteller talk out loud requires no effort to pay attention. Whereas when you’re bored, you’re conscious of how much effort is required to pay attention.

~ David Foster Wallace

A writer who doesn’t read is like a director who doesn’t watch movies.

~ Kira Hawke

You'll never get to the happily ever after if you don't move past the current chapter...

~ Carmen Desousa

I read to learn from the greats but I write to compete with them.

~ Jazmin Anguiano

I was behind, but now I'm below. Hopefully, they'll have books wherever I go...

~ Carmen Desousa

A man who wants time to read and write lets the grass grow long.

~ Sloan Wilson

A book acts as the getaway car when you need to escape.Even when you're the one writing it.

~ Julie Wright

How could I fall asleep, when I love the pleasure of reading and writing at night?

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

We sometimes reveal how ignorant or bored we were when we read a book by giving it 5-stars.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Writers: read books. Read good books. Read bad books. Learn what does and does not work.

~ Kira Hawke

It feels good to read book. But it is grander to write a book.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

If e-book readers were invented before print books, (petty things such as) the smell of ink would have been some people’s only reason for not abandoning e-books.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

The survival spirit, either read or write a story.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

I read and feel that same compulsion; the desire to possess what he has written, which can only be subdued by writing something myself.

~ Patti Smith

Once, before leaving on vacation, I copied an entire page from an Alice Munro story and left it in my typewriter, hoping a burglar might come upon it and mistake her words for my own. That an intruder would spend his valuable time reading, that he might be impressed by the description of a crooked face, was something I did not question, as I believed, and still do, that stories save you.

~ Jincy Willett

The only thing a closed book is good for is a table that wobbles. Be an open book.

~ A.d. Posey

The more you read, the more you write, and the more you free yourself to do so, the better writer you will become.

~ A.d. Posey

Cry while writing it, and readers will cry while reading it.

~ A.d. Posey

Reading sparks writing.

~ A.d. Posey

How you feel after reading something indicates not what you’ve read but where you are at.

~ A.d. Posey

Reading opens up other pockets of the mind.

~ A.d. Posey

Sharpen your life always; even though it will come to an end like a pencil, we have to keep on writing

~ Munia Khan

Every sacred soul must walk and keep the way of God in the wilderness for years, to begin the sacred writings.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Lila was able to speak through writing; unlike me when I wrote, unlike Sarratore in his articles and poems, unlike even many writers I had read and was reading, she expressed herself in sentences that were well constructed, and without error, even though she had stopped going to school, but–further–she left no trace of effort, you weren't aware of the artifice of the written word. I read and I saw her, I heard her. The voice set in the writing overwhelmed me, enthralled me even more than when we talked face to face; it was completely cleansed of the dross of speech, of the confusion of the oral; it had the vivid orderliness that I imagined would belong to conversation if one were so fortunate as to be born from the head of Zeus and not from the Grecos, the Cerullos.

~ Elena Ferrante

The hardest part about walking away from someone is the part where you realize that, no matter how slowly you go, they will never run after you.

~ Genereux Philip

Fake is the new real,You gotta keep a lot a shit to yourself.

~ Genereux Philip

If an Artist falls in love with you, you will live forever.

~ Genereux Philip

If I was meant to be controlled, I would have come with a remote.

~ Genereux Philip

If ur laptop doesnt smell like fire then ur losing.

~ Genereux Philip