Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.
Robert FrostI didn’t live at school, I lived where I could and studied what I enjoyed studying. I took what I wanted from that education but was making my first record at the same time. I don’t know anyone from school. I was just leading a different life. I was really interested in writing and other things.
Lana Del ReyI don’t know how many good books I still have in me; I hope there are another four or five.
Haruki MurakamiBrevity and conciseness are the parents of correction.
Hosea BallouI am not a consecutive writer.
Dr. SeussSomebody just back of you while you are fishing is as bad as someone looking over your shoulder while you write a letter to your girl.
Ernest HemingwayFor novelists or musicians, if they really want to create something, they need to go downstairs and find a passage to get into the second basement. What I want to do is go down there, but still stay sane.
Haruki MurakamiThe short words are best, and the old words are the best of all.
Winston ChurchillLike a pianist runs her fingers over the keys, I’ll search my mind for what to say. Now, the poem may want you to write it. And then sometimes you see a situation and think, ‚I’d like to write about that.‘ Those are two different ways of being approached by a poem, or approaching a poem.
Maya AngelouFor a long time now I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can.
Ernest HemingwayI’m happy to be a writer – of prose, poetry, every kind of writing. Every person in the world who isn’t a recluse, hermit or mute uses words. I know of no other art form that we always use.
Maya AngelouYou don’t write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.
F. Scott FitzgeraldWhen I did have some success, it further emboldens you to be like, ‚No, I’m just going to write what I feel I should write.‘
Frank OceanSome things get written more quickly than others, but I can’t really measure degrees of difficulty.
Paul AusterI don’t do research. I never have.
Ray BradburyYou want to be a writer? Start writing. You want to be a filmmaker? Start shooting stuff on your phone right now.
Matthew McConaugheyAll of my writing is God-given.
Ray BradburyThe great fun in my life has been getting up every morning and rushing to the typewriter because some new idea has hit me.
Ray BradburyYou don’t have to be a renowned artist like Q-Tip to try your hand at poetry. You don’t need any special equipment – that’s the beauty of it.
Michelle ObamaLena Waithe won an Emmy for writing while starring on the Netflix show ‚Master of None,‘ but it might be more accurate to call her a Master of Everything.
Kamala HarrisWriting and travel broaden your ass if not your mind and I like to write standing up.
Ernest HemingwayIt was one of those evenings when men feel that truth, goodness and beauty are one. In the morning, when they commit their discovery to paper, when others read it written there, it looks wholly ridiculous.
Aldous HuxleyWriting is good, thinking is better. Cleverness is good, patience is better.
Hermann HesseWhen I am working on a book or a story, I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you, and it is cool or cold, and you come to your work and warm as you write.
Ernest HemingwayI don’t think there’s such a thing as autobiographical fiction. If I say it happened, it happened, even if only in my mind.
Maya AngelouMy own books drive themselves. I know roughly where a book is going to end, but essentially the story develops under my fingers. It’s just a matter of joining the dots.
Terry PratchettI’ve been writing since I was really young, so I considered myself a writer for a really long time.
Lana Del ReyI don’t set out to write about spirituality; I am free to do something different every time.
Paulo CoelhoOf all that is written, I love only what a person has written with his own blood.
Friedrich NietzscheI love to sing and I really love to write, but in terms of being onstage, I’m not that comfortable, which I think is sort of clear.
Lana Del ReyI write for myself things that I’ve gone through.
Dolly PartonI cannot claim to have had a hard time publishing.
Alice WalkerThere is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.
Ernest HemingwayThat is how you get to be a writer, incidentally: you feel somehow marginal, somehow slightly off-balance all the time.
Kurt VonnegutI no longer feel attracted to the well-made novel. I want to write the story that will zero in and give you intense, but not connected, moments of experience. I guess that’s the way I see life. People remake themselves bit by bit and do things they don’t understand.
Alice MunroMy advice is this. For Christ’s sake, don’t write a book that is suitable for a kid of 12 years old, because the kids who read who are 12 years old are reading books for adults. I read all of the James Bond books when I was about 11, which was approximately the right time to read James Bond books.
Terry PratchettThe day when I am no more than a writer I shall cease to be a writer.
Albert CamusThe rudiment of verse may, possibly, be found in the spondee.
Edgar Allan PoeIt’s not easy to define poetry.
Bob DylanWhen I write about a 15-year old, I jump, I return to the days when I was that age. It’s like a time machine. I can remember everything. I can feel the wind. I can smell the air. Very actually. Very vividly.
Haruki MurakamiI never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.
Samuel JohnsonI never expected any sort of success with ‚Mockingbird’… I sort of hoped someone would like it enough to give me encouragement.
Harper LeeIt seemed like a very small possibility for me to become an artist. I didn’t have the need to be on the stage; I didn’t feel the need to be heard. I just needed to write.
AuroraI’ve often made revisions at that stage that turned out to be mistakes because I wasn’t really in the rhythm of the story anymore. I see a little bit of writing that doesn’t seem to be doing as much work as it should be doing, and right at the end, I will sort of rev it up. But when I finally read the story again, it seems a bit obtrusive.
Alice MunroI never write about the road. I never write about hotels or anything like that.
Taylor SwiftI just write what I wanted to write. I write what amuses me. It’s totally for myself. I never in my wildest dreams expected this popularity.
J. K. RowlingI was once a journalist. And I think of myself as a journalist, and that’s it. You tell the truth. I even wrote a book called ‚The Truth‘.
Terry PratchettWriting is like anything else – the more you do it, the better you get at it, the easier it comes, and the less concerned you’ll be about what’s going to happen to it, where it’s going, what it sounds like, whether it’s right.
Wayne DyerThe difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter – ‚tis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning.
Mark TwainLove is the answer to everything. It’s the only reason to do anything. If you don’t write stories you love, you’ll never make it. If you don’t write stories that other people love, you’ll never make it.
Ray BradburyExcessive literary production is a social offense.
George EliotI kept writing not because I felt I was so good, but because I felt they were so bad, including Shakespeare, all those. The stilted formalism, like chewing cardboard.
Charles BukowskiWhen I was a teenager, I thought how great it would be if only I could write novels in English. I had the feeling that I would be able to express my emotions so much more directly than if I wrote in Japanese.
Haruki MurakamiI don’t go off and sit down and try to write material, because then it’s contrived and forced. I just live my life, and I see things in a word or a situation or a concept, and it will create a joke for me.
Steven WrightThere is good and mediocre writing within every genre.
Margaret AtwoodPeople think you have to go through something to write about it, and you absolutely do not. You can write about, like, a shoe. It’s a story.
Billie EilishAs a country, we can’t teach kids how to read and write when we got 18 years to do it. And that’s – that’s a disgrace.
John KennedyA man’s got to take a lot of punishment to write a really funny book.
Ernest HemingwayI mean, what would I be doing if I couldn’t write? But that fortunately hasn’t proved to be the case and I can read any day. I still read a lot, and I can write any day, but much more slowly and fewer words.
Christopher HitchensI am never going to have anything more to do with politics or politicians. When this war is over I shall confine myself entirely to writing and painting.
Winston Churchill