“I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying.”
— Woody Allen, American writer and filmmaker
“Importance isn’t important. Only good writing is.”
— Kingsley Amis, English novelist, poet, critic and teacher
“If an infinite number of rednecks riding in an infinite number of pickup trucks fire an infinite number of shotgun rounds at an infinite number of highway signs, they will eventually produce all the world’s great literary works in Braille.”
— Anonymous
“Of all fatiguing, futile, empty trades, the worst, I suppose, is writing about writing.”
— Hilaire Belloc, one of the most prolific writers in England during the early 20th century
“You write and then you erase. You call that a profession?”
— Saul Bellow’s father to the Nobel Prize-winning author
“There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.”
— Joseph Brodsky, Russian-born writer, winner of 1987 Nobel Prize for Literature
“Beneath the rule of men entirely great”
“The pen is mightier than the sword.”
— Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, British literary patron and writer in the play “Richelieu”
“verbicidal: Condition that exists when a person believes he or she is skilled in the use of words (a verbalist), but in reality is grammatically challenged.”
— BuzzWhack
“Those who write clearly have readers; those who write obscurely have commentators.”
— Albert Camus, French author and philosopher and winner of the Nobel prize
“Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade, just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself.”
— Truman Capote, American author of In Cold Blood and Breakfast at Tiffany’s
“And above all, never forget that the pen is mightier than the plow-share. By this I mean that writing, all in all, is a hell of a lot more fun than farming. For one thing, writers seldom, if ever, have to get up at five o’clock in the morning and shovel manure. As far as I am concerned, that gives them the edge right there.”
— Willa Cather, Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist
“Coleridge was a drug addict. Poe was an alcoholic. Marlowe was stabbed by a man whom he was treacherously trying to stab. Pope took money to keep a woman’s name out of a satire, then wrote a piece so that she could still be recognized anyhow. Chatterton killed himself. Byron was accused of incest. Do you still want to be a writer — and if so, why?”
— Bennett Cerf, co-founder of Random House
“Our admiration of fine writing will always be in proportion to its real difficulty and its apparent ease.”
— Charles Caleb Colton, clergyman, sportsman, gambler, and aphorist
“Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice and journalism what will be grasped at once.”
— Cyril Connolly, English intellectual
“We have launched our Student in the world; we have seen him shake off the dust of the schools; and now nothing remains but to wish him a successful career, and a throng of clients, so that he may not be obliged, after long and bootless efforts, to scribble for a newspaper.”
— Emile de la Bedollierre, French author
“Writing advertisements is the second most profitable form of writing. The first is ransom notes.”
— Phil Dusenberry, advertising creative director
“I got my paper back with a note from the professor: “You have a flair for writing, but no knowledge of the subject matter. Consider journalism.””
— Charles Feeney, businessman and philanthropist
“The pen is mightier than the sword, and considerably easier to write with.”
— Marty Feldman, British writer, comedian and actor
“I once sent a story to the Santa Monica Review. In his rejection letter, the editor wrote: “Good enough story — but what’s unique about your sentences?” … I had to work on word choices, the music of language. I hadn’t realized that writing would be so hard.”
— Janet Fitch, author of White Oleander
“What an atrociously delicious thing we are bound to say writing is — since we keep slaving this way, enduring such tortures and not wanting things otherwise. There is a mystery in this I cannot fathom. The writer’s vocation is perhaps comparable to love for one’s native land (of which I have little, by the way), a certain fated bond between men and things. Whether poets, sculptors, painters or musicians, we perceive existence as refracted in words, shapes, colors or harmonies, and we find that the most wonderful thing in the world.”
— Gustave Flaubert, French novelist
“The first man who threw a curse instead of a stone invented civilization.”
— Sigmund Freud, father of psychoanalysis
“Let’s bring it up to date with some snappy nineteenth century dialogue.”
— Samuel Goldwyn, American motion picture producer
“Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.”
— Robert Heinlein, Hugo Award-winning science fiction writer
“Of course writing can be taught. This is not to say that you can teach anyone to be Faulkner. But you can’t teach anyone to be Thelonius Monk, and no one questions the value of piano lessons. You can’t teach anyone to be Andre Agassi, yet no one questions (at least from a tennis-playing perspective) the sending of 5-year-olds to tennis bootcamps in Florida to learn how to hit tennis balls for 17 hours a day.”
“The secret of all good writing is sound judgment.”
— Horace, leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus, in Ars Poetica
“What is called style in writing or speaking is formed very early in life, while the imagination is warm, and impressions are permanent.”
— Thomas Jefferson, third President of the United States
“There are two literary maladies — writer’s cramp and swollen head. The worst of writer’s cramp is that it is never cured; the worst of swollen head is that it never kills.”
— Coulson Kernahan, English novelist
“The best writers are writers with highly cultivated senses. They revel in touch, taste and smell. They look intently at the world around them. They sense the rhythms of language. They are insatiably curious.”
— James J. Kilpatrick, journalist and author of The Writer’s Art
“All of us learn to write in the second grade. Most of us go on to greater things.”
— Bobby Knight, NCAA Division I-winning basketball coach at Texas Tech
“Writing, the art of communicating thoughts to the mind through the eye, is the greatest invention of the world. Its utility may be conceived by the reflection that to it we owe everything which distinguishes us from savages. Take it from us, and the Bible, all history, all science, all government, all commerce and nearly all social intercourse go with it.”
— Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States
“Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after.”
— Anne Morrow Lindbergh, author and pioneering American aviator
“That writer is so bad he shouldn’t be left alone in a room with a typewriter.”
— Herman J. Mankiewicz, American screenwriter
“Writers wallow in words like pigs in a mud puddle, and the dirtier we get, the happier we are.”
— Robert Masello, author, Robert’s Rules of Writing: 101 Unconventional Lessons Every Writer Needs to Know
“We write, they wrong.”
— Matthew McGough, writer for the “Law & Order” television series, offering a slogan for the 2007 writers’ strike
“The difference between so-so writers and great writers is the tolerance they have for mediocrity.”
— Ana Menéndez, Miami Herald columnist
“You want to eat the writer — be my guest.”
— Director F.W. Murnau (John Malkovich) to his demanding star (Willem Dafoe) in “Shadow of the Vampire”
“Non-writers think of writing as a matter of tinkering, touching up, making presentable, but writers know it is central to the act of discovering.”
— Donald M. Murray, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist
“Don’t tell me that words don’t matter. “I have a dream.” Just words. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” Just words. “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” Just words. Just speeches. It’s true that speeches don’t solve all problems, but what is also true is that if we can’t inspire the country to believe again, then it doesn’t matter how many plans and policies we have.”
“I am a farmer of thoughts, and all the crops I raise I give away.”
— Thomas Paine, American political philosopher and author
“This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.”
— Dorothy Parker, humorist, writer, critic quoted by Chip Scanlan in Chip on Your Shoulder
“Be a scribe! Your body will be sleek, your hand will be soft. You are one who sits grandly in your house; your servants answer speedily; beer is poured copiously; all who see you rejoice in good cheer. Happy is the heart of him who writes; he is young each day.”
— Ptahhotep, thought to be the first recorded author, about 2400 BC
“Human memory is the only certain immortality; books are memory’s hard copy.”
“Writing is not a special language that belongs to English teachers and a few sensitive souls who have a “gift for words.” Writing is the logical arrangement of thought. Anyone who thinks clearly should be able to write clearly — about any subject at all.”
— William Zinsser, author, On Writing Well, in Writing to Learn
