100 Quotes About Writers On Writing

It takes a lot of skill to be a wordsmith, but it doesn’t have to be difficult. The writers-on-writing quotes below show that writers are just regular people who can relate to the rest of us on many levels. Whether they’re relishing the creative process or sharing their own challenges and triumphs, they’re all about inspiration and encouragement for writers everywhere.

Dance above the surface of the world. Let your thoughts...
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Dance above the surface of the world. Let your thoughts lift you into creativity that is not hampered by opinion. Red Haircrow
In order to write the book you want to write,...
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In order to write the book you want to write, in the end you have to become the person you need to become to write that book. Unknown
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Discipline allows magic. To be a writer is to be the very best of assassins. You do not sit down and write every day to force the Muse to show up. You get into the habit of writing every day so that when she shows up, you have the maximum chance of catching her, bashing her on the head, and squeezing every last drop out of that bitch. Lili St. Crow
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Living is about capturing the essence of things. I go through my life every day with a vial, a vial wherein can be found precious essential oils of every kind! The priceless, fragrant oils that are the essence of my experiences, my thoughts. I walk inside a different realm from everybody else, in that I am existing in the essence of things; every time there is reason to smile, I hold out my glass vial and capture that drop of oil, that essence, and then I smile. And that is why I have smiled, and so you and I may be smiling at the same time but I am smiling because of that one drop of cherished, treasured oil that I have extracted. When I write, I find no need to memorize an idea, a plot, a sequence of things: no. I must only capture the essence of a feeling or a thought and once I have inhaled that aroma, I know that I have what I need. C. Joybell C.
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I hope I don't write TOO many books! When I look at authors who have written too many books, I wonder to myself "When did they live?" I certainly want to write BECAUSE I live! I know I don't want to write in order to live! My writing is an overflow of the wine glass of my life, not a basin in which I wash out my ideals and expectations. C. Joybell C.
I hope that someday when I am gone, someone, somewhere,...
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I hope that someday when I am gone, someone, somewhere, picks my soul up off of these pages and thinks, "I would have loved her. Nicole Lyons
Feels so good to be quoted
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Feels so good to be quoted Malebo Sephodi
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To me, quotes function as the sunscreen against a writers brilliance. As soon as I cannot stand to look at the magnificence of the acropolis of pure thought the writer managed to doll out in the cognizant chaos - I quote him, and by doing so I am discharged and freed. On the other hand, even while I do acknowledge that some things cannot be quoted, I vehemently distrust any writer whose army of quotes does not consist of impeccable warriors but the sort of bootless canon fodder that caused one to write in the first place, wishing to circumlocute that strappant lot. No writer can ever recover from bad quotes. I check the army of quotes, and if it has no sporting chance against a simple pack of butter then I will simply never ever read this person. One often hears short stories are the benchmark of great writers, but if you ask me, I'd rather first look at their quotes. Martijn Benders
I don’t mind writing philosophical thoughts. If I don’t want...
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I don’t mind writing philosophical thoughts. If I don’t want to die like one. Debasish Mridha
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The first fact of the world is that it repeats itself. I had been taught to believe that the freshness of children lay in their capacity for wonder at the vividness and strangeness of the particular, but what is fresh in them is that they still experience the power of repetition, from which our first sense of the power of mastery comes. Though predictable is an ugly little world in daily life, in our first experience of it we are clued to the hope of a shapeliness in things. To see that power working on adults, you have to catch them out: the look of foolish happiness on the faces of people who have just sat down to dinner is their knowledge that dinner will be served. Probably, that is the psychological basis for the power and the necessity of artistic form.. Maybe our first experience of form is the experience of our own formation.. And I am not thinking mainly of poems about form; I’m thinking of the form of a poem, the shape of its understanding. The presence of that shaping constitutes the presence of poetry. Robert Hass
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I think there are two types of writers, the architects and the gardeners. The architects plan everything ahead of time, like an architect building a house. They know how many rooms are going to be in the house, what kind of roof they're going to have, where the wires are going to run, what kind of plumbing there's going to be. They have the whole thing designed and blueprinted out before they even nail the first board up. The gardeners dig a hole, drop in a seed and water it. They kind of know what seed it is, they know if planted a fantasy seed or mystery seed or whatever. But as the plant comes up and they water it, they don't know how many branches it's going to have, they find out as it grows. And I'm much more a gardener than an architect. George R.r. Martin
I have no taste for either poverty or honest labor,...
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I have no taste for either poverty or honest labor, so writing is the only recourse left for me. Hunter S. Thompson
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Writing is the dragon that lives underneath my floorboards. The one I incessantly feed for fear it may turn and devour my ass. Writing is the friend who doesn't return my phone calls; the itch I'm unable to scratch; a dinner invitation from a cannibal; elevator music for a narcoleptic. Writing is the hope of lifting all boats by pissing in the ocean. Writing isn't something that makes me happy like a good cup of coffee. It's just something I do because not writing, as I've found, is so much worse. Quentin R. Bufogle
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Writing, music, sculpting, painting, and prayer! These are the three things that are most closely related! Writers, musicians, sculptors, painters, and the faithful are the ones who make things out of nothing. Everybody else, they make things out of something, they have materials! But a written work can be done with nothing, it can begin in the soul! A musical piece begins with a harmony in the soul, a sculpture begins with a formless, useless piece of rock chiseled and formed and molded into the thing that was first conceived in the sculptor's heart! A painting can be carried inside the mind for a lifetime, before ever being put onto paper or canvass! And a prayer! A prayer is a thought, a remembrance, a whisper, a communion, that is from the soul going to what cannot be seen, yet it can move mountains! And so I believe that these five things are interrelated, these five kinds of people are kin. C. Joybell C.
Anyone who says writing is easy isn't doing it right.
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Anyone who says writing is easy isn't doing it right. Amy Joy
All you have to do is put one word after...
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All you have to do is put one word after another, and remember how great it feels to be a writer. Stephanie Lennox
I write to believe in goodness.
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I write to believe in goodness. Red Haircrow
If you live with dogs, you'll never run out of...
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If you live with dogs, you'll never run out of things to write about. Sharon Delarose
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I think the reason why I don't read so much, is because as I have observed, whole books all boil down to a drop of essence. You can read a book full of ten thousand words and at the end, sum it up in one sentence; I am more for the one sentence. I am more for the essence. It's like how you need a truckload of roses to extract one drop of rose oil; I don't want to bother with the truckload of roses because I would rather walk away with the drop of rose oil. So in my mind, I have written two hundred books. Why? Because I have with me two hundred vials with one drop of essence in each! . C. Joybell C.
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The internet is killing the art of writing. The big "publish" button begs you to publish even before you go back and make one single edit, and as if this was not enough, you have instant readers who praise your writing skills! - Bangambiki Habyarimana
What I've learned about writing is that sometimes less is...
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What I've learned about writing is that sometimes less is more, while often more is grander. And both are true. Richelle E. Goodrich
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There is nothing harder to estimate than a writer's time, nothing harder to keep track of. There are moments–moments of sustained creation–when his time is fairly valuable; and there are hours and hours when a writer's time isn't worth the paper he is not writing anything on. E.B. White
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... The Book is more important than your plans for it. You have to go with what works for The Book ~ if your ideas appear hollow or forced when they are put on paper, chop them, erase them, pulverise them and start again. Don't whine when things are not going your way, because they are going the right way for The Book, which is more important. The show must go on, and so must The Book. E.a. Bucchianeri
The task of the artist at any time is uncompromisingly...
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The task of the artist at any time is uncompromisingly simple – to discover what has not yet been done, and to do it. Craig Raine
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Literature might be called the art of story, and story might in turn be called a universal language, for every culture we know of has a tradition of storytelling. No doubt stories have touched your life, too, from bedtime stories you may have heard as a child to news stories you see on TV or read in a newspaper. We might even say that a major goal of living is to created the story of our own lives, a story we hope to take pleasure and pride in telling. Andrea A. Lunsford
Sooner or later every writer evolves his own definition of...
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Sooner or later every writer evolves his own definition of a story. Mine is: A reflection of life plus beginning and end (life seems not to have either) and a meaning. Mary OHara
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I write whenever it suits me. During a creative period I write every day a novel should not be interrupted. Unknown
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I realize that some of you may have come in hopes of hearing tips on how tobecome a professional writer. I say to you, "If you really want to hurt yourparents, and you don't have the nerve to be a homosexual, the least you cando is go into the arts. But do not use semicolons. They are transvestitehermaphrodites, standing for absolutely nothing. All they do is show you'vebeen to college. Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
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I prefer to be on the side of losers, the misunderstood or lonely people rather than writing about the strong and powerful. Unknown
If you surrender to your imagination, the story will write...
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If you surrender to your imagination, the story will write itself. T.N. Suarez
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I write because there is a madness within me to express my thoughts in words. I write because I feel passionately about certain feelings and there is this yearning within me to express these feelings in words. I am not comfortable meeting a lot of people. I like solitude. I like thinking and I dont like talking much. Avijeet Das
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When life seems like an uphill task do not ever give up on yourself or on life! Travel to a new place, learn a new language, embrace a new culture, play a musical instrument, read a good book, watch the sunrise, experience the sunset, go for a swim in the river, hug a tree, sit near the lake, or climb a mountain! You will fall in love with life all over again! Avijeet Das
I have always enjoyed my solitude. It gives me time...
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I have always enjoyed my solitude. It gives me time to think and to write. Avijeet Das
You may follow the footsteps The whole day will pass...
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You may follow the footsteps The whole day will pass With you going around in circles Yet not reaching anywhere at last! Avijeet Das
Just being a writer allows one the maturity to have...
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Just being a writer allows one the maturity to have random conversations with random strangers! Avijeet Das
Your personal growth is the only thing that matters. You...
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Your personal growth is the only thing that matters. You own and write your story no one else does. Believe in your unique steps up the mountain. Brittany Burgunder
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...writers are a savage breed, Mr. Strike. If you want life-long friendship and selfless camaraderie, join the army and learn to kill. If you want a lifetime of temporary alliances with peers who will glory in your every failure, write novels. Robert Galbraith
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There is no greater feeling of accomplishment than to create a world that solely exists in your imagination and be able to pull someone into this hidden place inside of my thoughts. To make someone care for a person that has manifested from my dreams, to make them hate me for putting them in danger, and for them to ask to be taken on another journey with me when it is all said and done is why I write. Teresa Mummert
As a childthere was eitherbooksorpain.i chose books.-how i became a...
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As a childthere was eitherbooksorpain.i chose books.-how i became a writer Nayyirah Waheed
If you write a kid's book only for kids, then...
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If you write a kid's book only for kids, then you have failed. Don Roff
I meet people and they become chapters in my stories.
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I meet people and they become chapters in my stories. Avijeet Das
I don't care about wearing branded clothes or flaunting brands....
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I don't care about wearing branded clothes or flaunting brands. But I do care about the books that I read and the music that I listen to. Avijeet Das
I don't spend money on books. I write them myself.
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I don't spend money on books. I write them myself. Ljupka Cvetanova
We have conversations with each other most nights - Sylvia...
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We have conversations with each other most nights - Sylvia Plath and me! Avijeet Das
And then it dawned on me that the greatest love...
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And then it dawned on me that the greatest love stories in the world never have happy endings. Avijeet Das
She asked me the definition of beauty. So I told...
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She asked me the definition of beauty. So I told her name in my reply! Avijeet Das
I know not what it is about you that makes...
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I know not what it is about you that makes me go crazy but I do know that the radiance in your eyes is more dazzling than that in all the diamonds of this world! Avijeet Das
I know not what it is about you that makes...
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I know not what it is about you that makes me go crazy but I do know that the fragrance of your skin is more sublime than that of all the perfumes of this world! Avijeet Das
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I know not what it is about you that makes me go crazy but I do know that the radiance in your eyes is more dazzling than that in all the diamonds of this world! And that the inimitable fragrance of your skin is more sublime than that of all the perfumes of this world! Avijeet Das
She cured me of my sadness.
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She cured me of my sadness. Avijeet Das
Your gracefulness and feminine charms always so tender, you make...
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Your gracefulness and feminine charms always so tender, you make my heart smile and wonder! Avijeet Das
She loved me deeply, madly and passionately. She knew no...
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She loved me deeply, madly and passionately. She knew no other way! Avijeet Das
I closed my eyes, took a deep breath and dived...
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I closed my eyes, took a deep breath and dived deeply into her ocean of love and that's how I saved my soul! Avijeet Das
Either I love someone completely, totally and madly or not...
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Either I love someone completely, totally and madly or not at all! Avijeet Das
One day someone will fall in love with you despite...
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One day someone will fall in love with you despite all your flaws! Then magic will happen in your life! Avijeet Das
You are lovelier than all the roses in the world.
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You are lovelier than all the roses in the world. Avijeet Das
At times all you need is a bottle of fine...
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At times all you need is a bottle of fine old wine, a mellifluous piece of music playing in the background and a good book to spend the entire night in a magical bliss! Avijeet Das
Sylvia Plath and I met a long time ago. A...
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Sylvia Plath and I met a long time ago. A really long time ago. Was it a summer day? No! It was a wintry November morning! Avijeet Das
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She texted me 'I love you.' I texted back 'I love you too.' She then texted me 'I love you more.' And I smiled reading her message and texted in reply 'No, I love you more.' Then she texted me 'I love you infinity power infinity power infinity into infinity.' I had no words to reply and smiled looking at her text! Avijeet Das
You made a poet fall in love with the world.
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You made a poet fall in love with the world. Avijeet Das
Life is truly lived only when we discover other faiths,...
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Life is truly lived only when we discover other faiths, festivals, languages and cultures. Avijeet Das
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Practical affairs task the human brain throughout the day. At night, the mind takes a deserved hiatus to consider the impossible and the absurd. In the carnage of our nighttime sleep tussles, the colored liqueurs of the true, the possible, fantasy, and the mythic beliefs become intermixed. Eyelets of the commonsensical and the imaginative are incorporated, and a new realism emerges out of our distilled perception of the veridical derived from the phenomenal realm of sensory reality and the philosophic world of ideals contained in the noumenal realm. The resultant psychobiologic vision immerses us in bouts of intoxicating inspiration and artistic stimulation and leaves us rickety boned and weakened after enduring a dreaded hangover of perpetual doubt laced with vagueness and insecurity. Kilroy J. Oldster
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All writers are demonic dreamers. Writing is an act of sharing experiences and offering of an individualistic perspective of our private attitudes pertaining to whatever topics of thought intrigues the author. Writing is a twitchy art, which attempts to employ linguist building blocks handed-down from past generations. Writers’ word choices form a structure of conjoined sentences when overlaid with the lingua of modern culture. Writers attempt to emulate in concrete form the synesthesia of our personal pottage steeped in our most vivid feelings. Writing a personal essay calls for us to sort out a jungle of lucid observations and express in a tangible technique our unique interpretation of coherent observations interlaced with that effusive cascade of yearning, the universal spice of unfilled desire, which turmoil of existential angst swamps us. Kilroy J. Oldster
The whole world's writing novels, but nobody's reading them.
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The whole world's writing novels, but nobody's reading them. Robert Galbraith
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People have many cruel expectations from writers. People expect novelists to live on a hill with three kids and a spouse, people expect children's story writers to never have sex, and people expect all great poets to be dead. And these are all very difficult expectations to fulfill, I think. C. Joybell C.
I do not follow any tradition. I may stand at...
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I do not follow any tradition. I may stand at the beginning of one. Avijeet Das
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The so called beautiful people, especially the ones who are obsessed with their looks, bore me. They just have this superficiality in all things that they do or want to accomplice in life. It is like they want to look 'beautiful' all the time but not 'be beautiful' from within. I like depth. People who go deep into the way of things and the meaning of life. People who may not look beautiful but are truly beautiful! . Avijeet Das
The unkind words that we said and the unkind deeds...
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The unkind words that we said and the unkind deeds that we did will haunt us one day! Avijeet Das
In retrospect we can only be thankful to all the...
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In retrospect we can only be thankful to all the mistakes that we made and to all the lessons that we learned from them! Avijeet Das
The night is the balm for the wounded souls of...
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The night is the balm for the wounded souls of the world. Avijeet Das
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You resting your head tenderly on my shoulders while we sit below the old Oak tree. And we smile at each other and gaze lovingly at the fascinating sunset over the hills. This moment makes me feel completely alive as if we have reached not just cloud nine or ten but also cloud infinity! Avijeet Das
And you must not worry about me. You must follow...
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And you must not worry about me. You must follow your dreams. You have your life ahead of you. I am just a wanderer passing by. Avijeet Das
Life always has some surprises up its sleeve!
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Life always has some surprises up its sleeve! Avijeet Das
A writer of any merit does not worry about being...
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A writer of any merit does not worry about being accepted everywhere. He must write to inspire, to change for the better or to challenge the status quo! Avijeet Das
Aren't you tired from all that smiling that you do...
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Aren't you tired from all that smiling that you do at the camera? Relax and come with me to the mountains. There is more to life than the cameras! Avijeet Das
Looking at old photographs inundates you with a flood of...
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Looking at old photographs inundates you with a flood of nostalgic emotions! And you can't be sure where you want to swim in the deluge of memories! Avijeet Das
Your eyes hold all the answers to my life's problems.
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Your eyes hold all the answers to my life's problems. Avijeet Das
I love the smell of coffee when I wake up...
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I love the smell of coffee when I wake up in the morning. It gives me the awesome feeling of hope! Avijeet Das
I and my silences keep talking to each other.
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I and my silences keep talking to each other. Avijeet Das
Writing is not a hobby. It's the only way I...
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Writing is not a hobby. It's the only way I get to shut up the demons in my head. Mark Maish
Whatever you do, let it be lovely.
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Whatever you do, let it be lovely. A.D. Posey
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Talented writers etched the story detailing the travails of broken souls numerous times. The poets recounted an equal amount of times the lucent tears of human laughter and weeping sorrow. Everyone understands bitterness and joy. Conversely, the most evocative aspects of human beings, the bewildering clarification of their ambiguous natures, are virtually indefinable and therefore unutterable. Written testaments to love, truth, beauty, and adoration of nature are inherently weak because words fail to convey what a person experiences inside the spaces that compose their chemical field. Kilroy J. Oldster
We write to strengthen our soul and the spirit of...
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We write to strengthen our soul and the spirit of other souls. Lailah Gifty Akita
I grasp words for the sake of clutching My mind...
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I grasp words for the sake of clutching My mind considers them heart touching Right then I write for my reader's pleasure Not knowing what distance a soul can measure Munia Khan
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Life is a collection of memories and feelings. Mawkish sentimentally urges us to engage in artistic overtures, we yearn to share with other people a melody of rudimentary experiences and respond to a stabilizing tune strung together with a shared ethos. We walk in parallel strides with our brethren seeking out equivalent affirmations of our being. We long to shout out to the world that we once walked this earth; we seek to leave in our wake traces of our pithy habitation. Our unfilled longing propels us into committing senseless acts of self-sabotage and then we desperately seek redemption from our slippery selves by building monuments to the human spirit. We employ a bewildering blend of conscious and unconscious materials to construct synoptic testaments to our temporal existence. We labor on the canvas of our choosing to scrawl our inimitable mark, fanatically toiling to escape a sentence of total obliteration along with our impending mortality. . Kilroy J. Oldster
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I write things down because my thoughts get too heavy in my head and it hurts my neck. Joyce Rachelle
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They always tell you to do what you love. But they forget to add that writing doesn't pay by the hour. Joyce Rachelle
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Humankind cannot exist without the makeshift paradigm of innovative art, which genuine amoeba expresses elusive and unsayable thoughts. Humankind’s gallery of artistic impressions ranges from the starkness of personified cave drawings to the free ranging lexis of modern art. Collection of multihued stories of the ages portrays the vivid panoply of enigmatic vitas etched by humankind’s self-imposed sense of urgency. Each passing generation’s effusion of trope offerings seamlessly folds its shared renderings into the shimmering panorama of the cosmos, the sparkling nightscape that houses the intangible life force all communal souls. . Kilroy J. Oldster
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An invisible, yet active current of mental energy, underscores any book as well as any other form of artistic creation. A creative burst of psychological energy ignites any creative project. The emotional energy that underlies the artistic work propels it forward endowing it with articulation, texture, rhythm, and movement. When the expressive energy of the artist flags, the work comes to a stopping point and it takes on its final composition. . Kilroy J. Oldster
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Writing is probably the only form of art, through which you can express, which you would otherwise wouldn't dare to say in person.... Ramana Pemmaraju
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You're never as good a writer as you think you are, and you're never as bad. Just keep reading and writing, writing, writing. Don Roff
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Oh you cut your hair! What happened? Are you going through a breakup or something?"" My favorite character died. Joyce Rachelle
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Reading books makes us more attentive to our personage and the aesthetic world that we live in. Writers that we idolize use language, logic, and nuance to paint physical and emotional scenes with refined precision. A writer’s use of vivid language creates lingering aftereffects that work their wonder on the reader’s malleable mind. A stirred mind resurrects our semiconscious memories; it causes us to summon up enduring images of our family, friends, and acquaintances. Just as importantly, inspirational writing makes us recognize our own telling character traits and identify our formerly unexpressed thoughts and feelings. Kilroy J. Oldster
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I used to be afraid about what people might say or think after reading what I had written. I am not afraid anymore, because when I write, I am not trying to prove anything to anyone, I am just expressing myself and my opinions. It’s ok if my opinions are different from those of the reader, each of us can have his own opinions. So writing is like talking, if you are afraid of writing, you may end up being afraid of talking. Bangambiki Habyarimana
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I am not a supporter of burning books; but like poison, some books should be kept away from simple minds who can't take in the strong content they provide Bangambiki Habyarimana
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Once, before leaving on vacation, I copied an entire page from an Alice Munro story and left it in my typewriter, hoping a burglar might come upon it and mistake her words for my own. That an intruder would spend his valuable time reading, that he might be impressed by the description of a crooked face, was something I did not question, as I believed, and still do, that stories save you. Jincy Willett
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One author said "I write because I want to live a footprint in the sands of history.” It's hard to live a footprint in the sands of history when giants are passing through the same sands unless you are one of the giants Bangambiki Habyarimana
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I will only mention that the independent power of words to affect the writing of history is a thing to be watched out for. They have an almost frightening autonomous power to produce in the mind of the reader an image or idea that was not in the mind of the writer. Obviously they operate this way in all forms of writing, but history is particularly sensitive because one has a duty to be accurate, and careless use of words can leave a false impression one had not intended. Barbara W. Tuchman
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Storytelling is ultimately the only way that we know besides song, dance, painting, and music to share with our tribesmen what it means to be human, express the indefinable feelings that unite humankind. Kilroy J. Oldster