Writing Quotes on Words & Creativity | GloryQuotes

Famous Writing Quotes

One must be an inventor to read well. There is then creative reading as well as creative writing.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

There are different rules for reading, for thinking, and for talking. Writing blends all three of them.

Every sentence spoken by Napoleon, and every line of his writing, deserves reading, as it is the sense of France.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends.

Friedrich Nietzsche

If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead, either write something worth reading or do things worth writing.

Benjamin Franklin

For a creative writer possession of the "truth" is less important than emotional sincerity.

That writer does the most who gives his reader the most knowledge and takes from him the least time.

Charles Caleb Colton

I never knew a writer yet who took the smallest pains with his style and was at the same time readable.

Inspirational Writing Quotes

An intellectual is a man who takes more words than necessary to tell more than he knows.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

We are much beholden to Machiavel and others, that write what men do, and not what they ought to do.

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

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.

Benjamin Franklin

Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.

There is some pleasure even in words, when they bring forgetfulness of present miseries.

In prayer it is better to have a heart without words than words without a heart.

Mohandas Gandhi

When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.

Ernest Hemingway

Short Writing Quotes

The first principle of a free society is an untrammeled flow of words in an open forum.

Adlai E. Stevenson

Talking isn't doing. It is a kind of good deed to say well; and yet words are not deeds.

William Shakespeare

Man does not live by words alone, despite the fact that sometimes he has to eat them.

Adlai E. Stevenson

Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all.

Winston Churchill

If you wish to know the mind of a man, listen to his words.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

There is creative reading as well as creative writing.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Action speaks louder than words but not nearly as often.

More Writing Quotes

Find enough clever things to say, and you're a Prime Minister; write them down and you're a Shakespeare.

George Bernard Shaw

The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help.

Nothing goes by luck in composition. It allows of no tricks. The best you can write will be the best you are.

Henry David Thoreau

All these primary impulses, not easily described in words, are the springs of man's actions.

Albert Einstein

Some people swear by writing courses, but whether it really helps American poetry, I have doubts.

Words differently arranged have a different meaning, and meanings differently arranged have different effects.

Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed there are many rewards, if you disgrace yourself you can always write a book.

If you can speak what you will never hear, if you can write what you will never read, you have done rare things.

Henry David Thoreau

As great minds have the faculty of saying a great deal in a few words, so lesser minds have a talent of talking much, and saying nothing.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Be able to describe anything visual, such as a street scene, in words that convey your meaning.

Marilyn vos Savant

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

Cyril Connolly

Originality is nothing but judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another.

Every secret of a writer's soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written large in his works.

As it is the characteristic of great wits to say much in few words, so small wits seem to have the gift of speaking much and saying nothing.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Substitute "damn" every time you're inclined to write "very"; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.

Be able to correctly pronounce the words you would like to speak and have excellent spoken grammar.

Marilyn vos Savant

Hush! Check those words. Do not cure ill with ill and make your pain still heavier than it is.

And what is the potential man, after all? Is he not the sum of all that is human? Divine, in other words?

I have written a book. This will come as quite a shock to some. They didn't think I could read, much less write.

However great a man's natural talent may be, the act of writing cannot be learned all at once.

Jean Jacques Rousseau

We decided that the French could never write user-friendly software because they're so rude.

Write down the thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought for are commonly the most valuable.

In our time political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.

Be generous with kindly words, especially about those who are absent.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart.

One of the disadvantages of wine is that it makes a man mistake words for thoughts.

Habits in writing as in life are only useful if they are broken as soon as they cease to be advantageous.

W. Somerset Maugham

All our words are but crumbs that fall down from the feast of the mind.

Writing a book of poetry is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo.

Don Marquis

In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood.

Henry David Thoreau

We are masters of the unsaid words, but slaves of those we let slip out.

Winston Churchill

The finest language is mostly made up of simple unimposing words.

Some guy hit my fender, and I told him, 'Be fruitful and multiply,' but not in those words.

I am a writer who happens to love women. I am not a lesbian who happens to write.

Jeanette Winterson

A writer should have this little voice inside of you saying, Tell the truth. Reveal a few secrets here.

Quentin Tarantino

Words, words, mere words, no matter from the heart.

William Shakespeare

A poet can write about a man slaying a dragon, but not about a man pushing a button that releases a bomb.

However many holy words you read, however many you speak, what good will they do you if you do not act on upon them?

Dr. Johnson was a lazy learned man who liked to think and talk better than to read or write; who, however, wrote much and well, but too often by rote.

William Hazlitt

You've gotten words about those American and Iraqi deaths and mutilations, but precious few images.

Bruce Jackson

But it's for every writer to decide his own pace, and the pace varies with the writer and the work.

Donna Tartt

Writing and travel broaden your ass if not your mind and I like to write standing up.

Ernest Hemingway

The writer, when he is also an artist, is someone who admits what others don't dare reveal.

Academics love to make theories about a body of work, but each book consumes the writer and is the sum of his or her world.

Jeanette Winterson

Plus, I love comic writing. Nothing satisfies me more than finding a funny way to phrase something.

Michael Pollan

Most of my work consisted of crossing out. Crossing out was the secret of all good writing.

Mark Haddon

When a man is in doubt about this or that in his writing, it will often guide him if he asks himself how it will tell a hundred years hence.

Proletarian language is dictated by hunger. The poor chew words to fill their bellies.

Explore writing quotes about writing, words and creative craft, drawn from a broad collection of notable voices. Sections such as Famous Writing Quotes, Inspirational Writing Quotes make the page easier to browse by intent, while links to Book Quotes and Art Quotes connect closely related ideas. Each quote can also lead readers to an eligible author page for deeper browsing.