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I always write only half-sentences, and the reader himself must supply the other half.—BRAHMS
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In every man's writings, the character of the writer must lie recorded.—CARLYLE, Goethe
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It is not the hand, but the understanding of a man, that may be said to write.—CERVANTES, Don Quixote
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Men have lost sight of distant horizons. Nobody writes of humanity, for civilization; they write for their country, their sect; to amuse their friends or annoy their enemies.—NORMAN DOUGLAS, South Wind
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I have the conviction that excessive literary production is a social offence.—GEORGE ELIOT, Life and Letters
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All the conventional rules of the construction of speech may be put aside if a writer is thereby enabled to follow more closely and lucidly the form and process of his thought.—HAVELOCK ELLIS, The Dance of Life
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As a man lives and thinks, so will he write.—GALSWORTHY
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You that intend to write what is worthy to be read more than once, blot frequently : and take no pains to make the multitude admire you, content with a few judicious readers.—HORACE, Satires
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The mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease.—HORACE
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A bad book is as much of a labour to write as a good one; it comes as sincerely from the author's soul.—ALDOUS HUXLEY, Point Counter Point
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An old tutor of a college said to one of his pupils: Read over your composition, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.—SAMUEL JOHNSON, Boswell: Life
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Perhaps no man ever thought a line superfluous when he wrote it. We are seldom tiresome to ourselves.—SAMUEL JOHNSON
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Who casts to write a living line, must sweat.—BEN JONSON, To the Memory of Shakespeare
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A good many young writers make the mistake of enclosing a stamped, self-addressed envelope, big enough for the manuscript to come back in. This is too much of a temptation to the editor.—RING LARDNER, How to Write Short Stories
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The writers who have. nothing to say are the ones you can buy; the others have too high a price.—WALTER LIPPMANN, A Preface to Politics
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Atmosphere stands always for the elimination of the artist. Get your good strong phrases, fresh and vivid; write intensively, not exhaustively or lengthily; don't narrate—paint! draw! build! Create! Better one thousand words that are builded than a whole book of mediocre spun-out, dashed-off stuff. Damn you! Forget you! And then the world will remember you!—JACK LONDON, to Cloudesley Johns
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Look, then, into thine heart, and write!—LONGFELLOW, Voices of the Night
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He does not write at all whose poems no man reads.—MARTIAL
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We do not write as we want to but as we can.—SOMERSET MAUGHAM
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True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
As those move easiest who have learn'd to dance.—POPE, Essay on Criticism
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The great majority of novelists write from a shallow inkwell. They but scratch the surface of reality. . . . I know scarcely a single writer who, throughout a work of any size, comes to grips with life like an athlete, hand to hand,—who embraces the entire mass of reality, his chosen prey, in the net of his spiritual and intellectual perception.—ROMAIN ROLLAND
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I once did hold it, as our statists do,
A baseness to write fair.—SHAKESPEARE, Hamlet
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Devise, wit; write, pen; for I am for whole volumes in folio.—SHAKESPEARE, Love's Labour's Lost
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You write with ease to show your breeding,
But easy writing's curst hard reading.—SHERIDAN
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In composing, as a general rule, run your pen through every other word you have written; you have no idea what vigor it will give your style.—SYDNEY SMITH, Lady Holland's Memoir
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As to the Adjective; when in doubt, strike it out.—MARK TWAIN, Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
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The only work about writing—It's a very terrible thing—
Is wrapping your stuff and stamping it
And tying it up with string.—MARGARET WIDDEMER, Confessions
