C. S. Lewis Quotes About Writing

• First, I do not sit down at my desk to put into verse something that is already clear in my mind. If it were clear in my mind, I should have no incentive or need to write about it. We do not write in order to be understood; we write in order to understand.

  C. S. Lewis

  Writing, Order, Should Have

• The world does not need more Christian literature. What it needs is more Christians writing good literature.

  C. S. Lewis

  Christian, Writing, Doe

• Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say 'infinitely' when you mean 'very'; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.

  C. S. Lewis

  Communication, Writing, Mean

• Anyone who is honestly trying to be a Christian will soon find his intelligence being sharpened: one of the reasons why it needs no special education to be a Christian is that Christianity is an education itself. That is why an uneducated believer like Bunyan was able to write a book that has astonished the whole world.

  C. S. Lewis

  Christian, Book, Writing

  C. S. Lewis (2012). “The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics”, p.74, HarperCollins UK

• You can make anything by writing.

  C. S. Lewis

  Writing, Kids, Storytelling

• I never exactly made a book. It's rather like taking dictation. I was given things to say.

  C. S. Lewis

  Book, Writing, Made

• If only this toothache would go away, I could write another chapter on the problem of pain.

  C. S. Lewis

  Pain, Writing, Interesting

• Write about what really interests you, whether it is real things or imaginary things, and nothing else.

  C. S. Lewis

  Real, Writing, Interest

• Never use abstract nouns when concrete ones will do. If you mean “More people died” don’t say “Mortality rose.

  C. S. Lewis

  Writing, Mean, People

• Whenever you are fed up with life, start writing: ink is the great cure for all human ills, as I have found out long ago.

  C. S. Lewis

  Writing, Long Ago, Ink

• Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become.

  C. S. Lewis

  Respect, Book, Healing

• I thought I could describe a state; make a map of sorrow. Sorrow, however, turns out to be not a state, but a process. It needs not a map, but a history, and if I don't stop writing that history at some quite arbitrary point, there's no reason why I should ever stop.

  C. S. Lewis

  Grief, Writing, Suffering

  C.S. Lewis (2012). “A Grief Observed”, p.29, Faber & Faber

• I write for the unlearned about things in which I am unlearned myself.

  C. S. Lewis

  Writing

  C. S. Lewis (1964). “Reflections on the Psalms”, p.9, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• If they won't write the kind of books we like to read we shall have to write them ourselves.

  C. S. Lewis

  Book, Writing, Kind

• What you want is practice, practice, practice. It doesn’t matter what we write (at least this is my view) at our age, so long as we write continually as well as we can. I feel that every time I write a page either of prose or of verse, with real effort, even if it’s thrown into the fire the next minute, I am so much further on.

  C. S. Lewis

  Real, Writing, Fire

• I was with book, as a woman is with child.

  C. S. Lewis

  Children, Book, Writing

• Don't say it was "delightful"; make us say "delightful" when we've read the description.

  C. S. Lewis

  Writing, Description, Delightful

• Aren't all these notes the senseless writings of a man who won't accept the fact that there is nothing we can do with suffering except to suffer it?

  C. S. Lewis

  Writing, Men, Suffering

• Don't say it was delightful; make us say delightful when we've read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers Please will you do the job for me.

  C. S. Lewis

  Jobs, Writing, Wonderful

• If a man is going to write on chemistry, he learns chemistry. The same is true of Christianity.

  C. S. Lewis

  Writing, Men, Chemistry

  Source: www.teachingbooks.net

• My own eyes are not enough for me...I will see through the eyes of others. Reality, even seen through the eyes of many is not enough...I will see what others have invented. Even the eyes of all humanity are not enough. I regret that the brutes cannot write books. Very gladly would I learn what face things present to a mouse or a bee. More gladly still would I perceive the olfactory world charged with all the information and emotion it carries for a dog.

  C. S. Lewis

  Dog, Nature, Regret

• What began the change was the very writing itself. Let no one lightly set about such a work. Memory, once waked, will play the tyrant.

  C. S. Lewis

  Memories, Writing, Play

  C. S. Lewis (1980). “Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold”, p.259, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• Even when I feared and detested Christianity, I was struck by its essential unity, which, in spite of its divisions, it has never lost. I trembled on recognizing the same unmistakable aroma coming from the writings of Dante and Bunyan, Thomas Aquinas and William Law.

  C. S. Lewis

  Writing, Law, Unity

• Some people write heavily, some write lightly. I prefer the light approach because I believe there is a great deal of false reverence about. There is too much solemnity and intensity in dealing with sacred matters; too much speaking in holy tones.

  C. S. Lewis

  Believe, Writing, Light

  Source: www.teachingbooks.net

• The only moral that is of any value is that which arises inevitably from the whole cast of the author's mind.

  C. S. Lewis

  Writing, Mind, Moral

  C. S. Lewis (2002). “Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories”, p.45, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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