writing quotes

The very ink with which history is written is merely fluid prejudice.

The first real thought that I had of something that I might do was to write for car magazines, because I always had a car thing.

I was not encouraged to follow the career of a writer because my parents thought that I was going to starve to death. They thought nobody can make a living from being a writer in Brazil. They were not wrong.

When everything works best, it’s not because you chose writing but because writing chose you. It’s when you’re mad with it, it’s when it’s stuffed in your ears, your nostrils, under your fingernails. It’s when there’s no hope but that.

Writing bores me so.

History should be written as philosophy.

One merit of poetry few persons will deny: it says more and in fewer words than prose.

The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.

People are more aware now of cities and of different ways of life. I suppose the writing I do is a bit in the past, and I’m not sure it’s the kind of writing I would do if I were starting now.

I tweet in the morning and the evening. To write 12 hours a day, there is a moment when you’re really tired. It’s my relaxing time.

And the idea of just wandering off to a cafe with a notebook and writing and seeing where that takes me for awhile is just bliss.

A letter does not blush.

I don’t like to write like God. It is only because you never do it, though, that the critics think you can’t do it.

I’ve been writing since I was really young, so I considered myself a writer for a really long time.

It’s when you begin to lie to yourself in a poem in order to simply make a poem, that you fail.

The discipline of the written word punishes both stupidity and dishonesty.

A bad book is as much of a labor to write as a good one, it comes as sincerely from the author’s soul.

I knew I wanted to do something creative. I didn’t think I’d have the luxury of doing something like that, because I didn’t know anyone who had pursued anything they really adored, but I had dreams for singing or writing.

The rudiment of verse may, possibly, be found in the spondee.

It’s with bad sentiments that one makes good novels.

I 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‘.

Writing is good, thinking is better. Cleverness is good, patience is better.

It 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.

Jane Austen is the pinnacle to which all other authors aspire.

Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man. The biography of the man himself cannot be written.

People want to know why I do this, why I write such gross stuff. I like to tell them I have the heart of a small boy… and I keep it in a jar on my desk.

A word after a word after a word is power.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.

The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true.

For a long time, I had the idea that I would do a certain amount of work the best I could, and then I would reach a comfort zone, and I wouldn’t be pushed to write more. I would become a different person. It’s a surprise to me that this hasn’t happened. Your body ages, but your mind is the same.

I first had the idea of writing a popular book about the universe in 1982. My intention was partly to earn money to pay my daughter’s school fees.

If you wish to be a writer, write.

I don’t care much for equations myself. This is partly because it is difficult for me to write them down, but mainly because I don’t have an intuitive feeling for equations.

When I write, I try to become different characters.

I 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.

You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you.

‚Bellyache‘ is totally fictional. I like writing about things that aren’t real. The song is about not trusting anyone and then putting trust in yourself and realizing that you don’t know what you are doing, either. Or realizing that things you do with a group of people that you think are cool in the moment are ultimately all on you.

There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it’s like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.

It is healthier, in any case, to write for the adults one’s children will become than for the children one’s ‚mature‘ critics often are.

I wake up in the morning and my mind starts making sentences, and I have to get rid of them fast – talk them or write them down.

I write for the same reason I breathe – because if I didn’t, I would die.

Sometimes I’ll jot a clever turn of phrase down. Sometimes I’ll just remember it.

Those who write clearly have readers, those who write obscurely have commentators.

Why did I write? Because I found life unsatisfactory.

For 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.

Like anything else that happens on its own, the act of writing is beyond currency. Money is great stuff to have, but when it comes to the act of creation, the best thing is not to think of money too much. It constipates the whole process.

I’m always just surprised when someone writes something about me.

Write injuries in dust, benefits in marble.

Brevity is a great charm of eloquence.

Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence.

I 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.

If the writing is honest it cannot be separated from the man who wrote it.

If a writer knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one ninth of it being above water.

I’m not a very creative person, you know? I’m not really an art person. I’m not a great reader or writer or artist or musician.

I seem to turn out stories that violate the discipline of the short story form and don’t obey the rules of progression for novels. I don’t think about a particular form: I think more about fiction, let’s say a chunk of fiction.

I only type every third night. I have no plan. My mind is a blank. I sit down. The typewriter gives me things I don’t even know I’m working on. It’s a free lunch. A free dinner. I don’t know how long it is going to continue, but so far there is nothing easier than writing.

So many writers don’t like to write… I like to write, and sometimes I’m afraid I like it too much, because when I get into work, I don’t want to leave it. And as a result, I’ll go for days and days and days without leaving my house.

I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.

People 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.

Writing and cafes are strongly linked in my brain.