Favorite Quotes About Writing

All-Time Favorite Quotes About Writing

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bestwritingquotes

“READING AND WRITING, LIKE EVERYTHING ELSE, IMPROVE WITH PRACTICE. AND, OF COURSE, IF THERE ARE NO YOUNG READERS AND WRITERS, THERE WILL SHORTLY BE NO OLDER ONES. LITERACY WILL BE DEAD, AND DEMOCRACY–WHICH MANY BELIEVE GOES HAND IN HAND WITH IT–WILL BE DEAD AS WELL.”

-MARGARET ATWOOD

“THE ART OF WRITING IS THE ART OF DISCOVERING WHAT YOU BELIEVE.”

-GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

“WRITING IS AN EXPLORATION. YOU START FROM NOTHING AND LEARN AS YOU GO.”

-E.L. DOCTOROW

“TO ME, THE GREATEST PLEASURE OF WRITING IS NOT WHAT IT’S ABOUT, BUT THE INNER MUSIC THAT WORDS MAKE.”

-TRUMAN CAPOTE

“TWO HOURS OF WRITING FICTION LEAVES THIS WRITER COMPLETELY DRAINED. FOR THESE TWO HOURS HE HAS BEEN IN A DIFFERENT PLACE WITH TOTALLY DIFFERENT PEOPLE.”

-ROALD DAHL

“WRITING, TO ME, IS SIMPLY THINKING THROUGH MY FINGERS.”

-ISAAC ASIMOV

“WRITING IS AN EXTREME PRIVILEGE BUT IT’S ALSO A GIFT. IT’S A GIFT TO YOURSELF AND IT’S A GIFT OF GIVING A STORY TO SOMEONE.”

-AMY TAN

“THE MOST DIFFICULT AND COMPLICATED PART OF THE WRITING PROCESS IS THE BEGINNING.”

-A.B. YEHOSHUA

“I BELIEVE THAT WRITING IS DERIVATIVE. I THINK GOOD WRITING COMES FROM GOOD READING.”

-CHARLES KURALT

“WHETHER YOU’RE KEEPING A JOURNAL OR WRITING AS A MEDITATION, IT’S THE SAME THING. WHAT’S IMPORTANT IS THAT YOU’RE HAVING A RELATIONSHIP WITH YOUR MIND.”

-NATALIE GOLDBERG

“YOUR WRITING VOICE IS THE DEEPEST POSSIBLE REFLECTION OF WHO YOU ARE. THE JOB OF YOUR VOICE IS NOT TO SEDUCE OR FLATTER OR MAKE WELL-SHAPED SENTENCES. IN YOUR VOICE, YOUR READERS SHOULD BE ABLE TO HEAR THE CONTENTS OF YOUR MIND, YOUR HEART, YOUR SOUL.”

-MEG ROSOFF

R.E. Slater - And There Was No Dawn (poem)

And There Was No Dawn
by R.E. Slater

In the black of morn gay songbirds sang,

alongside warbling robins chirping “Cheer-Cheer-rio’s”,

the spring woodthrushes clucked “Twala-la-dees,”

echoing woodland grouse thumping plumping breasts.

Upon my ear dark greenwoods flew awake

by their one’s and two’s and three’s, til’

fair woods burst its blackened bounds

echoing O’ echoing sweet heavenly rings.

Chilled the air, and frosty the grounds, were

upon the deep darks that closed my bounds,

as anon did I go a ’wandering its glistens

gloriously listening sweet heavenly visions.

Yet the heralded dawn would not come,

as deep darkness held fast the steadfast sun,

as I, and woodlawn, held our gaze

along shadowy lands its nary haze.

At once I knew this darkened world

was withholden its light upon its stays,

as earth revolved and day turned night

benighting the lands of the midnight sun.

Once filling with warming light from above

each ray singing gay morning fast awake,

but not this day, nor tomorrow’s dawn,

All ruined, all lost, this darkening day.

Both land and beast, slumbering hawk and fowl,

knew not whence this source of withering chill,

that closed the eyes of an unseeing world

withholding gay songs upon its beating breast.

And there was no dawn this day of days,

and there was no sun greeting mankind’s ways,

to darkly lay morn's bounds upon the ground

denying gay haunts across fair paschal lands.

As I, and earth, felt our way upon fey paths,
across the deep darks awakening its evil,
believing goodness came when fast asleep,
but it did not come these wastelands of hate.

- R.E. Slater

April 2-5, 9, 2015; Aug 27, 2015; Jun 1, 2020;

“you made me see the stars above”

@copyright R.E. Slater Publications

all rights reserved

What If... ?

"We seek to preserve peace by fighting a war,

or to advance freedom by subsidizing dictatorships,

or to 'win the hearts and minds of the people' by

poisoning their crops and burning their villages

and confining them in concentration camps;

we seek to uphold the 'truth' of our cause with lies,

or to answer conscientious dissent with

threats and slurs and intimidations. . . . 

I  have come to the realization that

I can no longer imagine a war that

I would believe to be either useful or necessary.

I would be against any war."

- Wendell Berry, February 10, 1968 [cf., activism]

What If... ?

make love; not war.

We live in a world,
buried in hate and filled with judgement.
A world covered in fear,
fighting a war because of our greed,
or maybe to try and cure ourselves,
from the fear we feel inside.

Some days I feel so alone,
watching the war for something,
that we can only define as greed.
Some days it feels as though,
the world has forgotten compassion.
We can think of anything else,
but money, greed and our own happiness.

We make reasons,
that change like seasons,
to why we fight,
and why we kill.
First its safety, then change,
then its to help.
but all we're doing is destroying,
and watch as people lose faith.

The world we live in today is nothing simple,
we fear those who aren't like us,
we fear anything that's different.
We push people around,
make them hate themselves for what they're not.
Make them slowly fade away,
because they don't see things our ways.

Just because they're different,
sometimes even because of who they love.
Some days I feel myself losing faith,
wondering if this will ever stop,
wondering if people will just learn to love.

But some days I do find hope,
because not everything in this world is wrong,
maybe if we just remembered a little compassion,
and try ed not to judge so much,
the world would be a little better.

by one second regrets poetry









Bombs Away

Written by Jonathan Thulin and Rachael Lampa

1: The bombs have dropped and I've fallen on my face

I made my decision and I'm feeling disgraced

But I won't stop till it's done

My fire and glow will be fading out soon 

Cause my conscience broke and my heart's out of tune

but I won't stop till it's done, no I won't stop till it's done

Chorus: Bombs away, Bombs away to my heart

To my heart bombs away

2: The devil came knocking at the door of my dreams

I knew it was wrong but my mind felt so free

Now I won't stop till it's done, no I won't stop

Till it's done

Chorus:

Bridge: The battle of me and myself is exploding me

The fire is gaining on me and I'm letting it

I'm searching the heaven's and earth for the end of me

So here I am, here I am

Light the fuse cause my heart's gonna blow.





Love Can Change the World

by Aaron Niequist

bridges are more beautiful than bombs are

bridges are more beautiful than bombs

listening is louder than a lecture

listening is louder than a shout

but Love – Love can change the world

oh do we still believe that

Love – Love can change the world

oh do we still believe in

Love – Love

God is Love, our God is Love and

Love can change the world

an open hand is stronger than a fist is

an open hand is stronger than a fist

wonder is more valuable than Wall Street

wonder is more valuable than gold

repeat chorus

may we never stop this dreaming

of a better world

may we never stop believing

in the impossible

Women: God is love

repeat chorus

©2005 AARONieq Music

Brothers & Sisters
A change has come

A change in the way
we look at people and things
a change in the way we feel
are felt
see
and are seen

To feel beautiful we must become beautiful

Loving ourselves more than we love the lie
You know the one you tell yourself
to feel secure

or the one you told,
just the other day to spare his feelings...
yeah that’s it,
(it didn’t have a thing to do with compromising your security)

the one that bought
a nations love
with terror

the one they sold us
to pimp our fear
to fuel tanks
the one that bought and lost your house
and sent your man to jail

To feel beautiful we must become beautiful
as a nation
as a nation within a nation
as family and community
as humans
not given to fight
until we know
and believe in
what we are fighting for
as lovers & friends
we must choose to
make love, not war

Jessica Holter

Make Love, Not War

You hear shouts “stop the killing”, 

Though people stay so violent, cruel. 

Is there hope for the healing? 

Our nature always has been dual. 

As someone gives you pretty smile, 

The other hides his drowned eyes. 

Where there was no place for guile, 

Now wars break out, heaven cries. 

Men take their homicidal guns, 

Drops of the rain are getting red 

And The Creator dooms his sons 

To strangle in the blood they shed. 

Forgotten of the sense of love, 

They get obsessed and then resigned. 

Eternal fight – it’s not enough, 

Their clemency is left behind. 

But we can love; do you remember? 

It is salvation, perfect cure. 

Frozen hearts get brittle, tender, 

Rid of ice cover that’s impure. 

This is enveloping your skin 

Like ocean caressing shore, 

When everything becomes serene. 

People, let us make love, not war.

by Den Khaustov

Wendell Berry - The Mad Farmer

The Contrarian-Agrarian

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

by Wendell Berry

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,

vacation with pay. Want more

of everything ready-made. Be afraid

to know your neighbors and to die.

And you will have a window in your head.

Not even your future will be a mystery

any more. Your mind will be punched in a card

and shut away in a little drawer.

The Mad Farmer 1

When they want you to buy something

they will call you. When they want you

to die for profit they will let you know.

So, friends, every day do something

that won’t compute. Love the Lord.

Love the world. Work for nothing.

Take all that you have and be poor.

Love someone who does not deserve it.

Denounce the government and embrace

the flag. Hope to live in that free

republic for which it stands.

Give your approval to all you cannot

understand. Praise ignorance, for what man

has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.

The Mad Farmer 2

Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.

Say that your main crop is the forest

that you did not plant,

that you will not live to harvest.

Say that the leaves are harvested

when they have rotted into the mold.

Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

Put your faith in the two inches of humus

that will build under the trees

every thousand years.

Listen to carrion — put your ear

close, and hear the faint chattering

of the songs that are to come.

Expect the end of the world. Laugh.

Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful

though you have considered all the facts.

The Mad Farmer 3

So long as women do not go cheap

for power, please women more than men.

Ask yourself: Will this satisfy

a woman satisfied to bear a child?

Will this disturb the sleep

of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.

Lie easy in the shade. Rest your head

in her lap. Swear allegiance

to what is nighest your thoughts.

As soon as the generals and the politicos

can predict the motions of your mind,

lose it. Leave it as a sign

to mark the false trail, the way

you didn’t go. Be like the fox

who makes more tracks than necessary,

some in the wrong direction.

Practice resurrection.

“Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front” from The Country of Marriage, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. 1973. Also published by Counterpoint Press in The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry, 1999; The Mad Farmer Poems, 2008; New Collected Poems, 2012.

Amazon Blurb

During the otherwise quiet course of his life as a poet, Wendell Berry has become “mad” at what contemporary society has made of its land, its communities, and its past. This anger reaches its peak in the poems of the Mad Farmer, an open-ended sequence he's found himself impelled to continue against his better instincts. These poems can take the shape of manifestos, meditations, insults, Whitmanic fits and ravings-these are often funny in spite of themselves. The Mad Farmer is a character as necessary, perhaps, as he is regrettable.

We have here gathered the individual poems from Berry's various collections to offer the teachings and bitcheries of this amazing American voice. After the great success of the lovely Window Poems, Bob Baris of the Press on Scroll Road, returns to design and produce an edition illustrated with etchings by Abigail Rover. His hand-press pages will be off-set for our trade edition.

Ed McClanahan offers an introduction wherein he clears up the inspiration behind the Mad Farmer himself. McClanahan also manages to take more credit than he is clearly due. Then Berry weighs in with an apology-and characteristic exaggeration. James Baker Hall and William Kloefkorn offer poems here that also show how the Mad Farmer has escaped into the work of others.

The whole is a wonderful testimony to the power of anger and humor to bring even the most terrible consequences into a focus otherwise impossible to obtain.

Wendell Berry - A Timbered Choir

A Timbered Choir

by Wendell Berry

Even while I dreamed I prayed that what I saw was only fear and no foretelling,

for I saw the last known landscape destroyed for the sake

of the objective, the soil bludgeoned, the rock blasted.

Those who had wanted to go home would never get there now.

I visited the offices where for the sake of the objective the planners planned

at blank desks set in rows. I visited the loud factories

where the machines were made that would drive ever forward

toward the objective. I saw the forest reduced to stumps and gullies; I saw

the poisoned river, the mountain cast into the valley;

I came to the city that nobody recognized because it looked like every other city.

I saw the passages worn by the unnumbered

footfalls of those whose eyes were fixed upon the objective.

Their passing had obliterated the graves and the monuments

of those who had died in pursuit of the objective

and who had long ago forever been forgotten, according

to the inevitable rule that those who have forgotten forget

that they have forgotten. Men, women, and children now pursued the objective

as if nobody ever had pursued it before.





The races and the sexes now intermingled perfectly in pursuit of the objective.

the once-enslaved, the once-oppressed were now free

to sell themselves to the highest bidder

and to enter the best paying prisons

in pursuit of the objective, which was the destruction of all enemies,

which was the destruction of all obstacles, which was the destruction of all objects,

which was to clear the way to victory, which was to clear the way to promotion, to salvation, 

to progress,

to the completed sale, to the signature

on the contract, which was to clear the way

to self-realization, to self-creation, from which nobody who ever wanted to go home

would ever get there now, for every remembered place

had been displaced; the signposts had been bent to the ground and covered over.





Every place had been displaced, every love

unloved, every vow unsworn, every word unmeant

to make way for the passage of the crowd

of the individuated, the autonomous, the self-actuated, the homeless

with their many eyes opened toward the objective

which they did not yet perceive in the far distance,

having never known where they were going,

having never known where they came from.

Amazon link

Amazon Blurb

Berry’s Sabbath poems embrace much that is elemental to human life--beauty, death, peace, and hope.In his preface to the collection, Berry writes about the growing audience for public poetry readings. While he sees poetry in the public eye as a good thing, Berry asks us to recognize the private life of the poem. These Sabbath poems were written "in silence, in solitude, and mainly out of doors," and tell us about "moments when heart and mind are open and aware."Many years of writing have won Wendell Berry the affection of a broad public. He is beloved for his quiet, steady explorations of nature, his emphasis on finding good work to do in the world, and his faith in the solace of family, memory, and community. His poetry is assured and unceasingly spiritual; its power lies in the strength of the truths revealed.