Quotes about writing
writing hair fire
Prowling about the rooms, sitting down, getting up, stirring the fire, looking out the window, teasing my hair, sitting down to write, writing nothing, writing something and tearing it up... Charles Dickens
writing numbers gold
Genius, in one respect, is like gold; numbers of persons are constantly writing about both, who have neither. Charles Caleb Colton
writing language nonsense
It is curious that some learned dunces, because they can write nonsense in languages that are dead, should despise those that talk sense in languages that are living.
writing men profound
He that knows himself, knows others; and he that is ignorant of himself, could not write a very profound lecture on other men's heads.
writing faces privacy
The society of dead authors has this advantage over that of the living: they never flatter us to our faces, nor slander us behind our backs, nor intrude upon our privacy, nor quit their shelves until we take them down.
writing men three
There are three difficulties in authorship: to write anything worth publishing, to find honest men to publish it, and to find sensible men to read it.
writing should-have fire
We should have a glorious conflagration, if all who cannot put fire into their works would only consent to put their works into the fire.
writing self hints
The awkwardness and embarrassment which all feel on beginning to write, when they themselves are the theme, ought to serve as a hint to author's that self is a subject they ought very rarely to descant upon.
writing two style
When I meet with any persons who write obscurely or converse confusedly, I am apt to suspect two things; first, that such persons do not understand themselves; and secondly, that they are not worthy of being understood by others.
writing cutting light
Some authors write nonsense in a clear style, and others sense in an obscure one; some can reason without being able to persuade, others can persuade without being able to reason; some dive so deep that they descend into darkness, and others soar so high that they give us no light; and some, in a vain attempt to be cutting and dry, give us only that which is cut and dried. We should labor, therefore, to treat with ease of things that are difficult; with familiarity, of things that are novel; and with perspicuity, of things that are profound.
writing order perfection
Perhaps that is nearly the perfection of good writing which is original, but whose truth alone prevents the reader from suspecting that it is so; and which effects that for knowledge which the lens effects for the sunbeam, when it condenses its brightness in order to increase its force.
writing thinking practice
There are some who write, talk, and think, so much about vice and virtue, that they have no time to practice either the one or the other.
writing blood may
It may be observed of good writing, as of good blood, that it is much easier to say what it is composed of than to compose it.
writing justice add
Justice to my readers compels me to admit that I write because I have nothing to do; justice to myself induces me to add that I will cease to write the moment I have nothing to say.
writing first-love should-have
Little Red Riding Hood was my first love. I felt that if I could have married Little Red Riding Hood, I should have known perfect bliss.
writing character men
What is natural in me, is natural in many other men, I infer, and so I am not afraid to write that I never had loved Steerforth better than when the ties that bound me to him were broken. In the keen distress of the discovery of his unworthiness, I thought more of all that was brilliant in him, I softened more towards all that was good in him, I did more justice to the qualities that might have made him a man of a noble nature and a great name, than ever I had done in the height of my devotion to him.
writing names forgiving
Take the pencil and write under my name, 'I forgive her.
writing support events
Dickens writes that an event, "began to be forgotten, as most affairs are, when wonder, having no fresh food to support it, dies away of itself.
writing stories want
Us writers all like each other and want to write stories with each other; we're having a good time. Charles Soule
writing years long
If I write too much of anything for too long, I burn out on it. So it helps to vary my output from year to year. Charles Stross
writing hints facts
If I wanted to be in movies, I'd have gone into scriptwriting: the fact that I write novels should be a big hint about what I prefer to do!
writing ideas stories
Writing your own story around the same ideas is not plagiarism; at worst, it's being unoriginal.
writing typewriters keys
I write exclusively using computers. Pens and typewriters can fsck right off - I wrote my first half million words in my teens on a manual typewriter (had to trade it for a new one due to keys snapping from metal fatigue) so I am not a pen or typewriter fetishist.
writing ideas care
If an idea is compelling enough it'll stick in my head until I am forced to write it. If it's forgettable, who cares?
writing novel available
Writing novels takes up about 100% of my available working time.
writing giving window
I write almost entlirely on Macs, because: Windows gives me hives.
writing years ideas
I have time to write 1-2 novels per year, and get roughly novel-sized ideas every month. I have to perform triage on my own writing impulses.
writing easy
It's usually quite easy to shrug and write something else instead.
writing fiction firsts
Fiction is about human beings, first and foremost. (It's not impossible to write fiction with no human protagonists, but it's very hard to keep the reader interested ...)
writing blessing trials
We are too prone to engrave our trials in marble and write our blessings in sand. Charles Spurgeon
writing men light
When a mortal man speaks anything of that eternal blessedness of the saints in glory, he is like a blind man discoursing about the light which he has never seen, and so cannot distinctly speak anything concerning it. He also said that "In a way it is akin to a man writing a travel guide for a land he has never visited or seen. It is to attempt to describe the indescribable with words which cannot come close to expressing the glory of heaven.
writing hands tongue
God writes with a pen that never blots, speaks with a tongue that never slips, acts with a hand that never fails
writing blessing people
Too many people write their blessings in the sand but engrave their sorrows in marble