Written Quotes

• Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don't see any.

  Orson Scott Card

  Writing, Past, Ideas

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• The Epistles in the New Testament have all of them a particular reference to the condition and usages of the Christian world at the time they were written.

  Joseph Butler

  Christian, World, Usage

  Joseph Butler, Stephen L. Darwall (1983). “Five Sermons, Preached at the Rolls Chapel and A Dissertation Upon the Nature of Virtue”, p.25, Hackett Publishing

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• A man will turn over half a library to make one book.

  Samuel Johnson

  Book, Writing, Men

  Quoted in James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791) (entry for 6 Apr. 1775)

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• If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write, because our culture has no use for it.

  Anais Nin

  Writing, Commitment, Culture

  "Woman as Writer" by Jeannette L. Webber and Joan Grumman, (p. 38), 1978.

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• The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas.

  Linus Pauling

  Motivational, Inspiring, Success

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• No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else's draft.

  H. G. Wells

  Passion, Writing, Editing

  32 Copy quote

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

  Anais Nin

  Love, Writing, Heart

  "Woman as Writer" by Jeannette L. Webber and Joan Grumman, (p. 38), 1978.

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• Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.

  George Orwell

  Struggle, Book, Writing

  George Orwell (1970). “A Collection of Essays”, p.316, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Inspirational, Motivational, Teaching

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• Writing gives you the illusion of control, and then you realize it's just an illusion, that people are going to bring their own stuff into it.

  David Sedaris

  Writing, Giving, People

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• As to the adjective: when in doubt, strike it out.

  Mark Twain

  Writing, Doubt, Adjectives

  Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894) ch. 11

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• To get the right word in the right place is a rare achievement. To condense the diffused light of a page of thought into the luminous flash of a single sentence, is worthy to rank as a prize composition just by itself...Anybody can have ideas--the difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph.

  Mark Twain

  Writing, Light, Ideas

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• There's no such thing as writer's block. That was invented by people in California who couldn't write.

  Terry Pratchett

  Block, Writing, California

  Interview with SFBC's Joyce Wiley, www.lspace.org. 1996.

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• The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.

  Sylvia Plath

  Inspirational, Life, Beautiful

  Sylvia Plath (2007). “The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath”, p.545, Anchor

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• No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Reading, Book, Writing

  "The Figure a Poem Makes". Book by Ernest Hemingway, 1939.

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• The worst thing you can do is nothing.

  Terry Pratchett

  Motivational, Change, Positive

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• Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.

  Cyril Connolly

  Inspirational, Respect, Clever

  New Statesman 25 Feb. 1933

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• Anybody can have ideas-the difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph.

  Mark Twain

  Writing, Plain Language, Ideas

  Mark Twain (1990). “Mark Twain's Letters, Volume 2: 1867-1868”, p.183, Univ of California Press

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• I never write "metropolis" for seven cents when I can write "city" and get paid the same.

  Mark Twain

  Writing, Cities, Seven

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• Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day.

  Orson Scott Card

  Writing, Past, Ideas

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• When you catch an adjective, kill it.

  Mark Twain

  Writing, Editing, Plain Language

  Mark Twain, Michael Patrick Hearn (1981). “The annotated Huckleberry Finn: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”, Random House Value Pub

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• Poetry is when you make new things familiar and familiar things new

  Rory Sutherland

  Writing, Photographer, Great Photography

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• Easy reading is damn hard writing.

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

  Powerful, Reading, Writing

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• A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit.

  Richard Bach

  Perseverance, Writing, Editing

  Richard Bach (2012). “A Gift of Wings”, p.9, Dell

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• It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous.

  Robert Benchley

  Inspirational, Funny, Time

  Quoted in Reader's Digest, Sept. 1949. According to Nigel Rees, Cassell's Humorous Quotations, the following appeared in Punch in 1924: " 'It took me nearly ten years to learn that I couldn't write.' 'I suppose you gave it up then?' 'Oh, no! By that time I had a reputation established.' " The issue referred to by Rees is 6 Feb., and the cartoonist is R. Curry.

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