"The multitude of books is a great evil. There is no limit to this fever for writing."

Luther, Martin on books - reading   

"The learned fool writes his nonsense in better language than the unlearned, but it is still nonsense."

Franklin, Benjamin on language
7 fans of this quote   

"A man's got to take a lot of punishment to write a really funny book."

Hemingway, Ernest on comedy and comedians
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"Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write it."

Wilde, Oscar on history and historians
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"Lovers who love truly do not write down their happiness."

France, Anatole on love
3 fans of this quote   

This quotation can be viewed in the context of a book

"It is difficult not to write satire."

Juvenal, (Decimus Junius Juvenalis) on sarcasm   

"Only the hand that erases can write the true thing."

Eckhart, Meister on truth   

"Writing is the incurable itch that possesses many."

Juvenal, (Decimus Junius Juvenalis) on writers and writing   

"Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing."

Mailer, Norman on writers and writing
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"Writing is the continuation of politics by other means."

Sollers, Philippe on writers and writing   

"Four basic premises of writing: clarity, brevity, simplicity, and humanity."

Zinsser, William on writers and writing
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"Writing is thinking on paper."

Zinsser, William on writers and writing
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"When people talk of the freedom of writing, speaking or thinking I cannot choose but laugh. No such thing ever existed. No such thing now exists; but I hope it will exist. But it must be hundreds of years after you and I shall write and speak no more."

Adams, John on freedom
3 fans of this quote   

"To write is to become disinterested. There is a certain renunciation in art."

Camus, Albert on art   

"It is easier to write an indifferent poem than to understand a good one."

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De on poetry and poets   

"How simple the writing of literature would be if it were only necessary to write in another way what has been well written. It is because we have had such great writers in the past that a writer is driven far out past where he can go, out to where no one can help him."

Hemingway, Ernest on literature   

"People do not deserve to have good writings; they are so pleased with the bad."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on literature   

"Write how you want, the critic shall show the world you could have written better."

Goldsmith, Oliver on criticism   

"Writing is the only profession where no one considers you ridiculous if you earn no money."

Renard, Jules on literature
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"The main thing is to make history, not to write it."

Bismarck, Otto Von on history and historians
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"If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don't listen to writers talking about writing or themselves."

Hellman, Lillian on writers and writing
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"Unprovided with original learning, unformed in the habits of thinking, unskilled in the arts of composition, I resolved-to write a book."

Gibbon, Edward on learning   

This quotation can be viewed in the context of a book

"All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn. American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since."

Hemingway, Ernest on literature
5 fans of this quote   

"Whatever advice you give, be short."

Horace on advice
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"A good scare is worth more than good advice."

Horace on advice
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"He gains everyone's approval who mixes the pleasant with the useful."

Horace on function
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"Sex is. There is nothing more to be done about it. Sex builds no roads, writes no novels and sex certainly gives no meaning to anything in life but itself."

Vidal, Gore on sex
4 fans of this quote   

"If you know somebody is going to be awfully annoyed by something you write, that's obviously very satisfying, and if they howl with rage or cry, that's honey."

Wilson, A. N. on slander   

"Journalist: a person without any ideas but with an ability to express them; a writer whose skill is improved by a deadline: the more time he has, the worse he writes."

Kraus, Karl on journalism and journalists   

"Somebody said to me, But the Beatles were anti-materialistic. That's a huge myth. John and I literally used to sit down and say, Now, let's write a swimming pool."

Mccartney, Paul on materialism   

"Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs."

West, Rebecca on biography   

"Novelists do not write as birds sing, by the push of nature. It is part of the job that there should be much routine and some daily stuff on the level of carpentry."

Golding, William on fiction   

"True glory consists in doing what deserves to be written; in writing what deserves to be read; and in so living as to make the world happier and better for our living in it."

Pliny The Elder on fame   

"No good poetry is ever written in a manner twenty years old, for to write in such a manner shows conclusively that the writer thinks from books, convention and clich?, not from real life."

Pound, Ezra on style   

"The artist doesn't have time to listen to the critics. The ones who want to be writers read the reviews, the ones who want to write don't have the time to read reviews."

Faulkner, William on criticism
3 fans of this quote   

"I find in most novels no imagination at all. They seem to think the highest form of the novel is to write about marriage, because that's the most important thing there is for middle-class people."

Vidal, Gore on fiction   

"We are motivated by a keen desire for praise, and the better a man is the more he is inspired by glory. The very philosophers themselves, even in those books which they write in contempt of glory, inscribe their names."

Cicero, Marcus T. on praise   

"If you write fiction you are, in a sense, corrupted. There's a tremendous corruptibility for the fiction writer because you're dealing mainly with sex and violence. These remain the basic themes, they're the basic themes of Shakespeare whether you like it or not."

Burgess, Anthony on fiction
3 fans of this quote   

"You who write, choose a subject suited to your abilities and think long and hard on what your powers are equal to and what they are unable to perform."

Horace on writers and writing   

"In writing biography, fact and fiction shouldn't be mixed. And if they are, the fictional points should be printed in red ink, the facts printed in black ink."

Bowen, Catherine Drinker on biography