Quotes On Writing

I've always been a collector of words.  As a kid I scribbled them in the blank notebooks my mom always bought me for my birthday.  Even before that, I wrote them on the walls with my sister's pink Tinkerbell lipstick.  Or chalked them on the sidewalk,  And traced them in the steam on the school bus windows.  I love gathering words.  So it seems only natural that I have a collection of quotes on writing.  Here are my favorites.  I hope you'll leave some of your favorites, too.

"Writing is not like painting where you add. It is not what you put on the canvas that the reader sees. Writing is more like a sculpture where you remove, you eliminate in order to make the work visible. Even those pages you remove somehow remain."  Elie Wiesel

“I write for the same reason I breathe.  If I didn't, I would die.
”  Isaac Asimov

“Writing a poem is like giving blood because it comes from the heart of the writer and goes to the heart of the receiver.”  Ralph Fletcher

“If you are not a writer, you will not understand the difficulties of writing. If you are not a writer, you will not know the fears and hopes of the writers you teach.”
  Mem Fox

“Teach the writer, not the writing.”  Lucy Calkins

“Writers don’t need to be given formulas; they need to be shown possibilities.”  Barry Lane

“Exercise the writing muscle every day, even if it is only a letter, notes, a title list, a character sketch, a journal entry. Writers are like dancers, like athletes. Without that exercise, the muscles seize up.”
  Jane Yolen

“The human mind is like an umbrella. It functions best when open.”  
Max Gropius

“Detail makes the difference between boring and terrific writing. It’s the difference between a pencil sketch and a lush oil painting. As a writer, words are your paint. Use all the colors.
”  Rhys Alexander

“If you read good books, when you write, good books will come out of you.”  
Natalie Goldberg

“Use your notebook to breathe in the world around you.”  Ralph Fletcher

“For your born writer, nothing is so healing as the realization that he has come upon the right word.”  Catherine Drinker Bowen

“Reading usually precedes writing and the impulse to write is almost always fired by reading. Reading, the love of reading, is what makes you dream of becoming a writer.”  Susan Sontag

“Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader. Not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.
”   E.L. Doctorow

“The two most engaging powers of an author are, to make new things familiar, and familiar things new.”  
Samuel Johnson

“The act of writing is an act of optimism. You would not take the trouble to do it if you felt it didn't matter.”  Edward Albee

“Don't let a single day go by without writing. Even if it's garbage, if garbage is all you can write, write it. Garbage eventually becomes compost with a little treatment.”  Anonymous

“The time to begin writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction.  By that time you begin to clearly and logically perceive what it is you really want to say.” Mark Twain

“Metaphors have a way of holding the most truth in the least space.”  Orson Scott Card

“Let who you are, what you are, what you believe, shine through every sentence you write, every piece you finish.”  John Jakes

“Once children learn how to learn, nothing is going to narrow their mind. The essence of teaching is to make learning contagious, to have one idea spark another." Marva Collins

“In helping students tune their ears-and mouths and eyes, even their fingertips, their nerve endings-to the glorious range of ways they can string words together, we need to encourage them to fool around, to experiment, to break rules even before they know all the rules.  Who ever knows all the rules, anyway?” Judith Rowe Michaels

“You don’t learn to write by going through a series of preset writing exercises.  You learn to write by grappling with a real subject that truly matters to you.” Ralph Fletcher

“It takes forty gallons of maple sap to make one gallon of maple syrup.  Maple sap is mostly water.  To make syrup, you’ve got to boil off that water.  Much of your writer’s notebook is like that watery sap.  You have to boil off lots of water in order to make the syrup of your writing dark, thick, and sweet.” Donald Murray and Ralph Fletcher

“The first draft is the down draft.  You just get it down.  The second draft is the up draft-you fix it up.  The third draft is the dental draft, where you check every tooth to see if it’s loose or cramped or decayed, or…healthy” Anne Lamott

“What dazzles one person might bore the next.  The question is: What moves you?  As a writer you need to be able to answer that question.  And take note of it.”  Ralph Fletcher

“Verbs are the muscles of good writing and adjectives are the fat.  I will spend hours trying to uncover that elusive verb or metaphor that one hopes will make a reader stop, ever so briefly, in wonder.”  J. Patrick Lewis

"The road to hell is paved with adverbs."  Stephen King

"No one ever died of writing in her notebook what is hidden or dangerous. You might cry-or laugh-but not die."  Natalie Goldberg

“If I fall asleep with a pen in my hand, don't remove it.  I might be writing in my dreams.” Danzae Pace

"Do not be surprised when those who ignore the rules of grammar also ignore the law. After all, the law is just so much grammar."  Robert Brault

"A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer.  It sings because it has a song."  Maya Angelou

"I apologize for the length of this letter.  I did not have time to make it shorter."  Mark Twain

"I revise not to make perfect; but to make full, passionate, enjoyable, uncomfortable, and truthful-all things human." Kimberly Carlson

"The first draft reveals the art, revision reveals the artist." Michael Lee

"I have rewritten-often several times-every word I have ever written.  My pencils outlast their erasers." Vladimir Nabokov

"The difference between the right and the nearly right word is the same as that between lightning and the lightning bug." Mark Twain