Quotes about Writing

A poet never takes notes..you never take notes in a Love Affair.

Oh, I wonder if I shall ever be able to do anything worth while in the way of writing.

Blessings be the inventor of the alphabet, pen and printing press! Life would be--to me in all events--a terrible thing without books.

What we want is not more little books about Christianity, but more little books by Christians on other subjects--with their Christianity latent.

I have a lot of respect for readers because I'm a reader. That's how I got into writing.

The pen is mightier than the sword as long as it doesn't run out of ink.

And then we'll be emulating Socrates,* once we're able to write hymns of praise in prison.

You are always naked when you start writing; you are always as if you had never written anything before; you are always a beginner. Shakespeare wrote without knowing he would become Shakespeare

Critics write out of intellectual exercise, not poets. Poets write straight from the heart.

I quickly learned that a book carefully arranged before your face was a bulletproof shield, an asbestos wall, a cloak of invisibility. I learned to take refuge behind books, to become, as my mother and father called me, 'the absentminded professor-' They screamed at me, but I couldn't hear. I was reading. I was writing. I was safe.

In a certain sense, you do write to seduce the world, but when it happens, you begin to feel like a whore. The disparity between your life and your work turns out to be as great as ever. And the people seduced by your work are usually seduced by all the wrong reasons.

To me, writing is prayer. I pray all the time.