writing

1.

A good many young writers make the mistake of enclosing a stamped, self-addressed envelope, big enough for the manuscript to come back in. This is too much of a temptation to the editor.

- Ring Lardner

2.

There are a lot of people who can't write and maybe shouldn't write.

- Sarah Hepola

3.

The novel we sit down to write, and the one we end up writing may be very different, just as the Jesus we grasp and the Jesus who grasps us may also differ.

- Madeleine L'Engle

4.

A word is a bud attempting to become a twig. How can one not dream while writing? It is the pen which dreams. The blank page gives the right to dream.

- Bachelard, Gaston

5.

You write with ease to show your breeding, But easy writing’s vile hard reading.

- Richard Brinsley Sheridan

6.

NOSE, n. The extreme outpost of the face. From the circumstance that great conquerors have great noses, Getius, whose writings antedate the age of humor, calls the nose the organ of quell. It has been observed that one's nose is never so happy as when thrust into the affairs of others, from which some physiologists have drawn the inference that the nose is devoid of the sense of smell. There's a man with a Nose, And wherever he goes The people run from him and shout: "No cotton have we For our ears if so be He blow that interminous snout!" So the lawyers applied For injunction. "Denied," Said the Judge: "the defendant prefixion, Whate'er it portend, Appears to transcend The bounds of this court's jurisdiction." Arpad Singiny

- Ambrose Bierce

7.

Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything that is beautiful; for beauty is God's handwriting -- a wayside sacrament. Welcome it in every fair face, in every fair sky, in every fair flower, and thank God for it as a cup of blessing.

- Emerson, Ralph Waldo

8.

All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.

9.

The Twist was a guided missile, launched from the ghetto into the very heart of suburbia. The Twist succeeded, as politics, religion, and law could never do, in writing in the heart and soul what the Supreme Court could only write on the books.

- Cleaver, Eldridge

10.

At least half the mystery novels published violate the law that the solution, once revealed, must seem to be inevitable.

- Raymond Chandler

11.

The time to begin writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction. By that time you begin to clearly and logically perceive what it is you really want to say.

- Mark Twain

12.

Always be nice to those younger than you, because they are the ones who will be writing about you.

- Cyril Connolly

13.

You ask me why I do not write something....I think one's feelings waste themselves in words, they ought all to be distilled into actions and into actions which bring results.

- Florence Nightingale

14.

It's not about the writing. It's about the feelings behind the words.

- Takayuki Ikkaku, Arisa Hosaka and Toshihiro Kawabata

15.

Writing a novel without being asked seems a bit like having a baby when you have nowhere to live.

- Ellman, Lucy

16.

I didn't lie--I was writing fiction in my mouth.

- Homer Simpson

17.

Even writers need relief from words.

- Sarah Vowell

18.

Good writing excites me, and makes life worth living.

- Pinter, Harold

19.

Every writing career starts as a personal quest for sainthood, for self-betterment. Sooner or later, and as a rule quite soon, a man discovers that his pen accomplishes a lot more than his soul.

- Brodsky, Joseph

20.

This is the challenge of writing. You have to be very emotionally engaged in what youÆre doing, or it comes out flat. You canÆt fake your way through this.

- Real Live Preacher