Writing Quotes

What woman says to fond lover should be written on air or the swift water. [Lat., Mulier cupido quod dicit amanti, In vento et rapida scribere oportet aqua.]

I intend to put up with nothing that I can put down.

Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.

Becoming a writer is about becoming conscious.

Every time I try to write a song, when I sit down and think I’m going to write, I really want to write a song, and it never works out. It’s always when it hits me unexpectedly on a plane or right before I go to bed, something like that.

If people cannot write well, they cannot think well, and if they cannot think well, others will do their thinking for them.

Literature is strewn with the wreckage of those who have minded beyond reason the opinion of others.

We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.

The production of souls is more important than the production of tanks. And therefore I raise my glass to you, writers, the engineers of the human soul.

A successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it.