Books want to be born: I never make them. They come to me and insist on being written, and on being such and such.
Samuel Butler – Writing books
The only good histories are those that have been written by the persons themselves who commanded in the affairs whereof they write.
Michel de Montaigne – History, Writing
I don’t plan to write another science book, but I don’t plan not to. I do enjoy writing histories, and taking subjects that are generally dull and trying to make them interesting.
Bill Bryson – Writing
An author is often obscure to the reader because they proceed from the thought to expression than like the reader from the expression to the thought.
Nicolas Chamfort – Author
Life is too precious to be spent in this weaving and unweaving of false impressions, and it is better to live quietly under some degree of misrepresentation than to attempt to remove it by the uncertain process of letter-writing.
George Eliot – Life, Letter
You can never correct your work well until you have forgotten it.
Voltaire – Writing
To hold a pen is to be at war.
Voltaire – Writing
A perfectly healthy sentence, it is true, is extremely rare. For the most part we miss the hue and fragrance of the thought; as if we could be satisfied with the dews of the morning or evening without their colors, or the heavens without their azure.
Henry David Thoreau – Writing, Word
A word is a bud attempting to become a twig. How can one not dream while writing? It is the pen which dreams. The blank page gives the right to dream.
Gaston Bachelard – Words, Dream, Writing
Too much nicety of detail disgusts the greatest part of readers, and to throw a multitude of particulars under general heads, and lay down rules of extensive comprehension, is to common understandings of little use.
Samuel Johnson – Writing and details
In all pointed sentences, some degree of accuracy must be sacrificed to conciseness.
Samuel Johnson – Accurancy, Writing
Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.
Benjamin Franklin – Writing, Reading
The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and all time.
George Bernard Shaw – Writing
Write without pay until somebody offers to pay you. If nobody offers within three years, sawing wood is what you were intended for.
Mark Twain – Writing
Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement; then it becomes a mistress, and then it becomes a master, and then a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster, and fling him out to the public.
