Ink Pen Quotes & Sayings

No pen, no ink, no table, no room, no time, no quiet, no inclination — James Joyce

He pulled out his personal journal and pen. Jess understood the impulse, all too well, to spill out the bile and hurt into ink, where no one could see it. He — Rachel Caine

A page lay on his desk. His fingers held a pen. With these tools he built a world. Perhaps the world he built lived behind his eyes and was transmitted to the page by the instrument of ink, or else it lived beneath the page somehow, his pen's progress sculpting form out of a purer white than sculptor's marble. — Max Gladstone

A man starts upon a sudden, takes Pen, Ink, and Paper, and without ever having had a thought of it before, resolves within himself he will write a Book; he has no Talent at Writing, but he wants fifty Guineas. — Jean De La Bruyere

I was drawing professionally by the time I was 12. I used to do very detailed sort of photorealistic pen-and-ink work, and I burned out on it around, like, high school. And cartooning really got me back into drawing. — Dan Povenmire

I write into an old book that smells of dust and whose pages are floppy with damp. Sometimes the ink splodges onto the paper, other times it will barely leave the nib of my pen. — Fennel Hudson

I have always had more dread of a pen, a bottle of ink, and a sheet of paper than of a sword or pistol. — Alexandre Dumas

When the ink runs dry, you're most likely writing at the wrong angle. — Carolyn Shields

If we use the Himalayas as an ink-tablet, the largest ocean as the ink-pot, the branch of the biggest tree of heaven as a pen, and the entire lithosphere as paper; and with this paper, ink, and pen, if the goddess of learning writes for an indefinite period, even then it would not be possible to write all the attributes that he possesses. — Acharya Ramananda

My pen is the key to a fantastic bordello, and once the gate is opened, it ejaculates a bloody ink. The virgin paper set to shriek evokes worlds heretofore unknown: eruptive, incorruptible, suffocating. — Rikki Ducornet

Be clear and smiling for those who are glad to see you.
Someone who is not, let his way darken like a pen leaving a faltering ink trail. — Rumi

Reading was what I needed to beat back all that noise and silence, those horrible silences. . . .An ink pen was the only way to carve a voice out of the air and have others hear it. — Reginald Dwayne Betts

It is to be regretted that no mental method of daguerreotype or photography has yet been discovered by which the characters of men can be reduced to writing and put into grammatical language with an unerring precision of truthful description. How often does the novelist feel, ay, and the historian also and the biographer, that he has conceived within his mind and accurately depicted on the tablet of his brain the full character and personage of man, and that nevertheless, when he flies to pen and ink to perpetuate the portrait, his words forsake, elude, disappoint, and play the deuce with him, till at the end of a dozen pages the man described has no more resemblance to the man conceived than the signboard at the coner of the street has to the Duke of Cambridge? — Anthony Trollope

Pen, ink, and paper and a sitting posture are great helps to attention and thinking. — David McCullough

It is not the ink and the paper that matter, but the hand that holds the pen. — Mark Frost

Can you hear me? Sighing. You were right. My requiem is well prepared. Still to be written is the poem that is never complete, an endless rubbing on the ink block, an endless dipping of the pen, an endless swoop over the white paper, the poem of my life. I will try to write it down. Soon, no, now, I will try. The first line. I called him Necktie. I will write: He taught me to see with eyes of feeling. — Milena Michiko Flasar

Now relax, think positively and begin
the smile of success awaits you. — Claudia Nice

Now, please, if I could direct your attention to the tip of this pen. Notice that it does not look like a normal pen. It is in fact a tooth of the Devil! And it will be injecting into your skin, not ink, but the blood of a demon! — William Pauley III

Writing's much more romantic when its pen and ink and paper. It's... More timeless. and worthwhile. Think about it. There are so many words gushing out into the universe these days. All digitally. All in Comic Sans or Times New Roman. Silly Websites. Stupid news stories digitally uploaded to a 24-hour channel. Where's all this writing going? Who's keeping a note of it all? Who's in charge of deciding what's worthwhile and what isn't? But back then... Back then, if someone wanted to write something they had to buy paper. Buy it! And ink. And a pen. And they couldn't waste too many sheets cos it was expensive. So when people wrote, they wrote because it was worthwhile... not just because they had some half-baked idea and they wanted to pointlessly prove their existence by sharing it on some bloody social networking site. — Holly Bourne

I am the Penitent God. And tonight, I have begun my battle. My siege. The hundred-thousand Ink-borne arrows, flying forth from my flaming pen, to assault the walls of tyrannical Cold that hold this man in awful rapture. My campaign for my friend's very soul. My war of Ice, Ink, and Ember. — S.G. Night

Waiting for the pen to dry up so he can start fresh with thoughts that are worth new ink. — Brian Andreas

Maybelline's Precise Ink Pen Liner is by far the easiest liquid eyeliner I've ever used. I'm really bad at applying liquid liner, and it glides on so nicely and actually stays on all day. — Bethany Mota

All writers pen sad stories to garner sympathy, writing is after all for the abandoned of the society: the ink-leech, spewing black blood and sucking innocent souls. — Aporva Kala

I don't even own a computer. I write by hand then I type it up on an old manual typewriter. But I cross out a lot - I'm not writing in stone tablets, it's just ink on paper. I don't feel comfortable without a pen or a pencil in my hand. I can't think with my fingers on the keyboard. Words are generated for me by gripping the pen, and pressing the point on the paper. — Paul Auster

I wore you on me at all times
Like I now carry my pen.
Unlike your own opinion my
Belongings must have a function.
You bled through the ink of my lines and
To be my subject nursed your thirst.

Was it my fault, or your own, that you forgot
- I do not deal in tender verse. — Mie Hansson

I live in a small world of gouache and brush and pen and ink. I'd like to explore the world of multiples - etching and prints. — Maira Kalman

The pen might be mightier than the sword, but the keyboard never runs out of ink. — Jason Landry

You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink. — G.K. Chesterton

I have often believed the pen to be a needle, and ink to be a thread. Each story is an intricately woven tapestry and with each word I invariably sew a piece of myself into the page. — Shaun Hick

In the beautiful words of Staton Kirkham Davis, 'You may be keeping accounts, and presently you shall walk out of the door that for so long has seemed to you the barrier of your ideals, and shall find yourself before an audience - the pen still behind your ear, the ink-stains on you fingers - and then and there shall pour out the torrent of your inspiration. You may be driving sheep, and you shall wander to the city - bucolic and open-mouthed; shall wander under the intrepid guidance of a spirit into the studio of the master, and after a time he shall say, 'I have nothing more to teach you.' And now you have become the master, who did so recently dream of great things while driving sheep. You shall lay down the saw and the plane to take upon yourself the regeneration of the world. — James Allen

The ink of a pen is simply
the blood of a heart — Michael Biondi

I pick up a pen and start to unscrew the whole thing, pull out the skinny little tube of blue ink. It would be so cool to have one of these built inside you, like a squid; you could point your finger and leave your mark on anything you wanted. — Jodi Picoult

I can blend words easily with my pen, and show concepts from deep within. Yet not everyone gets the message I send. So why do I even let these words begin? Maybe they will soak in one day at the right time. When the readers on a new path to find. So for now I'll continue to drop ink and not worry about what other people think. — Stanley Victor Paskavich

I remember when the Bic pen was controversial. They came from France. They were cheap, and when one was out of ink, you threw it away; you didn't dip it into more ink. — Patti Smith

Emma thought of Julian, sitting here, in this office. Year after year, from the time he was twelve and all scraped elbows and torn jeans. He would sit patiently with pen and ink, writing his letter to the Clave, petitioning them to let his sister Helen come home from Wrangel Island. — Cassandra Clare

Poor Excuses for Men {Couplet}
Every now and then good ink flows fluent from my playful pen,
Causing jealous minds to moulder in these poor excuses for men. — Beryl Dov

I love to draw-pencil, ink pen-I love art. When I go on tour and visit museums in Holland, Germany or England-you know those huge paintings?-I'm just amazed. You don't think a painter could do something like that. I can look at a piece of sculpture or a painting and totally lose myself in it. — Michael Jackson

A book should long for pen, ink, and writing-table: but usually it is pen, ink, and writing-table that long for a book. That is why books are so negligible nowadays. — Friedrich Nietzsche

When ink joins with a pen, then the blank paper
can say something. Rushes and reeds must be woven
to be useful as a mat. If they weren't interlaced, the wind would blow them away. — Jalaluddin Rumi

The midwife laid her hand on his thick skull,
With this prophetic blessing - Be thou dull; 60
Drink, swear, and roar, forbear no lewd delight
Fit for thy bulk, do anything but write.
Thou art of lasting make, like thoughtless men,
A strong nativity - but for the pen;
Eat opium, mingle arsenic in thy drink, 65
Still thou mayest live, avoiding pen and ink.
I see, I see, 'tis counsel given in vain,
For treason, botched in rhyme, will be thy bane;
Rhyme is the rock on which thou art to wreck,
'Tis fatal to thy fame and to thy neck. — John Dryden

Look at that," he said. "How the ink bleeds." He loved the way it looked, to write on a thick pillow of the pad, the way the thicker width of paper underneath was softer and allowed for a more cushiony interface between pen and surface, which meant more time the two would be in contact for any given point, allowing the fiber of the paper to pull, through capillary action, more ink from the pen, more ink, which meant more evenness of ink, a thicker, more even line, a line with character, with solidity. The pad, all those ninety-nine sheets underneath him, the hundred, the even number, ten to the second power, the exponent, the clean block of planes, the space-time, really, represented by that pad, all of the possible drawings, graphs, curves, relationships, all of the answers, questions, mysteries, all of the problems solvable in that space, in those sheets, in those squares. — Charles Yu

What? Do you dare smile and suggest for a moment that just because of the Absence between us I cannot make myself vivid to you? Ho! Silly boy! Don't you know that the plainest sort of black ink throbs more than some blood - and the touch of the softest hand is a harsh caress compared to the touch of a reasonably shrewd pen? Here - now, I say - this very moment: Lift this letter of mine to your face, and swear - if you're honestly able to - that you can't smell the rose in my hair! — Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

Soon after he purchased me, Epps asked me if I could write and read, and on being informed that I had received some instruction in those branches of education, he assured me, with emphasis, if he ever caught me with a book, or with pen and ink, he would give me a hundred lashes. — Solomon Northup

Compliments of congratulation are always kindly taken, and cost nothing but pen, ink and paper. I consider them as draughts upon good breeding, where the exchange is always greatly in favor of the drawer. — Lord Chesterfield

Burn worldly love,
rub the ashes and make ink of it,
make the heart the pen,
the intellect the writer,
write that which has no end or limit. — Guru Nanak

The fairy poet takes a sheet Of moonbeam, silver white; His ink is dew from daisies sweet, His pen a point of light. — Joyce Kilmer

A tour was being planned so we could conquer America, just like The Beatles had. All we had to do was sign on that little piece of paper you see on Mr. B.S.'s desk. We signed it in blue ink from a fountain pen - but had we known whom we were dealing with we would have pricked ourselves and used blood. — Diane Rinella

Put down the pen someone else gave you. No one ever drafted a life worth living on borrowed ink. Get to San Francisco. Get to San Francisco in defiance of your geography, your ancestry and the lonely change rattling sad excuses in your pocket. Fuel up on pie and diner coffee and mystic visions and the freedom of not knowing what's coming next except that you're burning the road to outrun it. — Jack Kerouac

I'm not a writer. I marvel at writing. I am sometimes absolutely astounded when I read something and I think how in the world did that man or that woman sit down at a typewriter, a computer or a pen and an ink well, and seemingly have nothing come between their heart and that pen. — Kevin Spacey

I dip my pen in the blackest ink, because I'm not afraid of falling into my inkpot. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The ink in the pen that writes success stories is "FOCUS" ... — Israelmore Ayivor

Let there be gall enough in thy ink, though thou write with a goose-pen, no matter. — William Shakespeare

I grew up writing thank-you notes. Real, honest-to-goodness, pen-and-ink, stamped and posted letters. More than simple habit, it's about what the commitment to expressing your thoughts and feelings in writing says about the character of the writer. About the joy such notes bring to the reader. — Taylor Mali

Death went on, If I'd sent you, with your taste for expeditious methods, the matter would have been resolved, but times have changed a lot lately, and one has to update the means and the systems one uses, to keep up with the new technologies, by using e-mail, for example, I've heard tell that it's the most hygienic way, one that does away with inkblots and fingerprints, besides which it's fast, you just open up outlook express on microsoft and it's gone, the difficulty would be having to work with two separate archives, one for those who use computers and another for those who don't, anyway, we've got plenty of time to think about it, they're always coming out with new models and new designs, with new improved technologies, perhaps I'll try it some day, but until then, I'll continue to write with pen, paper and ink, it has the charm of tradition, and tradition counts for a lot when it comes to dying. — Jose Saramago

If life's pen; passion is ink! — Israelmore Ayivor

Never durst a poet touch a pen to write
Until his ink was tempered with love's sighs. — William Shakespeare

Every drop of ink in my pen ran cold. — Horace Walpole

What followed were instructions for casting the spell itself and a diagram for laying the components out. Altin didn't like the secrecy thing, but a quick glance at the spell Greater Common Tongue showed that it was forty-three pages long. He didn't think he had that kind of time or expertise, so he decided to stick with the six-page version for now. He realized that getting cuttings of their hair was likely going to be an interesting trick as well. And he needed his quill pen, parchment and pot of ink, which meant he had to go back to the tower. He wondered how they were going to take his making another trip into the waterfall-pot room so soon, but he had little other choice. — John Daulton

Proper writing ink comes in a bottle, can be swirled like brandy in a glass, and smells like apple blossom after rain. — Fennel Hudson

My writing tools were my most precious belongings. My best quill pen was made from a raven's feather ... I was often so poor that I could not pay my mantua-maker, but I always invested in the best ink and parchment. I smoothed it with pumice stone till it was as white and fine as my own skin, ready to absorb the rapid scratching of my quill — Kate Forsyth

I've invaded the walls of the asylums with my ink pen. The way they look at mental illness won't be the same again — Stanley Victor Paskavich

Her feelings as dark as the night sky, the moon was the only thing making her come alive
So she got some paper and pen to let the ink spill it all out because talking never seemed to work.
Blood drops fell on her little piece of paper, drowning it along with her. By the time the blood dried up it left her with nothing but red dust. Red. The same color her eyes were captivated by.
They never told her that there is no way to get over crazy, messy things in life. There's only crossing that red sea as if you're walking through the wilderniss. The sun will rise when you've gone through the depts of it all. Writing wont matter anymore. Don't you understand? You're life is not messy little girl, you're just crazy sometimes. — N

I use a quill pen dipped in India ink. I also like Faber-Castell brush pens and Pigma Micron pens. And I work on Duo-Shade board. — Steve Breen

He reaches forward slowly, to lift the pen from my lax grip. Wearily I regard the faltering trail of ink it has tracked down my page. I have seen that shape before, I think, but it was not ink then. A trickle of drying blood on the deck of a Red-Ship, and mine the hand that spilled it? Or was it a tendril of smoke rising black against a blue sky as I rode too late to warn a village of a Red-Ship raid? Or poison swirling and unfurling yellowly in a simple glass of water, poison I had handed someone, smiling all the while? The artless curl of a strand of woman's hair left upon my pillow? Or the trail of a man's heels left in the sand as we dragged the bodies from the smoldering tower at Sealbay? The track of a tear down a mother's cheek as she clutched her Forged infant to her despite his angry cries? Like Red-Ships, the memories come without warning, without mercy. — Robin Hobb

In summer, when the days are long, Perhaps you'll understand the song: In Autumn, when the leaves are brown, Take pen and ink, and write it down. — Lewis Carroll

I clench my teeth and push forward. My pen grinds out the first and eldest word: an Ink-borne lance of black fire, scratched into a sheet of ice.
-The Penitent God — S.G. Night

Yes; I am a supercargo; pen, ink, and paper are my tools, and without my tools I am fit for nothing. — Alexandre Dumas

How is your handwriting?" I ask. "Do you write in pencil or pen?" They stare back at me with squinting eyes and a look that needs no words. "Get with it granddad. — Fennel Hudson

Traveling takes the ink out of one's pen as well as the cash out of one's purse. — Herman Melville

There is something magical in seeing what you can do, what texture and tone and colour you can produce merely with a pen point and a bottle of ink. — Ida Rentoul Outhwaite

In the early days of space travel, one interesting problem emerged from experiments with weightlessness. Americans found that ... normal ink pen would not work without gravity feed. Scientists undertook extensive research, finally developed high-technology pen to work in conditions of no gravity. In Russia, scientist faced with the same problem found a different solution. Instead of pen, they used pencil. — Marina Lewycka

Write, if you must; not otherwise. Do not write, if you can earn a fair living at teaching or dressmaking, at electricity or hod-carrying. Make shoes, weed cabbages, survey land, keep house, make ice-cream, sell cake, climb a telephone pole. Nay, be a lightning-rod peddler or a book agent, before you set your heart upon it that you shall write for a living ... Living? It is more likely to be dying by your pen; despairing by your pen; burying hope and heart and youth and courage in your ink-stand. — Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward

After I'd produced about two dozen pen and ink drawings, one evening I decided that they needed poems to accompany them. I still have no idea where that notion came from, but it took me about two hours to produce verses for these creatures. — Jack Prelutsky

I am a creator, writing like the wind, I carry the weight of a future world in the barrel of a pen, etching my characters into the paper with life giving ink so my dreams and reality might finally meet. — L.M. Fields

Because I am an officer and a gentleman they have given me my notebooks, pen, ink and paper. So I write and wait. I am committed to no cause, I love no living person. The fact that I have no future except what you can count in hours doesn't seem to disturb me unduly. After all, the future whether here or there is equally unknown. So for the waiting days I have only the past to play about with. I can juggle with a series of possibly inaccurate memories, my own interpretation, for what is worth, of events. There is no place for speculation or hope, or even dreams. Strangely enough I think I like it like that. — Jennifer Johnston

You say grace before meals. I say grace before I dip the pen in the ink. — G.K. Chesterton

Harper Johnson looked down at the woman bleeding on the floor. He drew a line through the first name on his list of three with a pen. The ink was red and the tip was broken, so it bled unevenly as he ran it through the letters. — Elin Barnes

I had finally become aware of how much I was capable of, how little I had to lose, and how deep into Douglas's soft sand I had sunk. Magellan's letters, which Douglas had recited, had become part of my being. It was as if I was right there with Magellan, following every curve of his pen as he wrote down his words to his beloved ones confiding his secret. I had become the ink, and the tip was tattooing my path. I was going to follow his dream, but still, I wished I knew why. — Celma Ribeiro

Once the man vacates the room, Genova motions toward the table between us. "Gun."
I hold up my hands. "I don't have one."
His brow furrows. "You came unarmed?"
"I never carry a gun," I say, "but that doesn't mean I'm unarmed."
Everything's a weapon if you look at it the right way.
"Knives, then."
"None of those, either."
"Then what do you got?"
"Not much." I consider it for a moment. "Some spare change, a peppermint, my wallet ... oh, and I've got a pen in my pocket."
He looks at me with disbelief. "A pen."
Reaching into my pocket, I pull out a simple black ballpoint ink pen.
Probably cost a dollar.
"You gonna kill somebody with that?" he asks.
I shrug, setting it on the table. "You never know. — J.M. Darhower

In a culture of silence Let the pen be your weapon The ink is permanent and can transcend emotions and stories across mediums into the future Weaponize your pen and destroy The culture of silence My — Nnennaya Amuchie

The ink in your pen never reshapes your thoughts, you must replace the ink before the ink can be inked properly. — Michael Bassey Johnson

She was sitting cross-legged on her bed in her white kimono, writing in a notebook with an ink pen she dipped in a bottle. 'Never let a man stay the night,' she told me. 'Dawn has a way of casting a pall on any night magic.' The night magic sounded lovely. Someday I would have lovers and write a poem after. — Janet Fitch

Best friend is like a pen and we're the paper. We'll not complete without their ink — Lucy 'Aisy

If a pen can communicate our thoughts, dreams, and emotions and be the voice of our soul, then ink is the medium that carries the message. — Fennel Hudson

A book calls for pen, ink, and a writing desk; today the rule is that pen, ink, and a writing desk call for a book. — Friedrich Nietzsche

You may be keeping accounts, and presently you shall walk out of the door that for so long has seemed to you the barrier of your ideals, and shall find yourself before an audience - the pen still behind your ear, the ink stains on your fingers and then and there shall pour out the torrent of your inspiration. — James Allen

I wonder if I can write this history, or if on every page there will be some sneaking show of a bitterness I thought long dead. I think myself cured of all spite, but when I touch pen to paper, the hurt of a boy bleeds out with the sea-spawned ink, until I suspect each carefully formed black letter scabs over some ancient scarlet wound. — Robin Hobb

I got myself a really nice nib pen, with like 15 kinds of India Ink, and tons of different nibs; I think I was just procrastinating, like, once I have the right nib, the book is just going to jump right out of my fingertips ... but then it just ended up looking like the shitty drawings that I usually do. — Demetri Martin

Borders are scratched across the hearts of men By strangers with a calm, judicial pen, And when the borders bleed we watch with dread The lines of ink across the map turn red. — Marya Mannes

Even though our words were mirrors that reflected the grotesque swamps of our emotions, the ink played more though. Because if she made mistake with her pen, I'd feel depressed. It's something invaluable our euphoric relationship, so deep that no can see our shame or denial. But our lies, helped us push on, because we didn't know the truth for what's worth. — Jeremy Limn

When it's time for you to write how you want your life to go just write right before your pen run out of ink because i know the opportunity is jusT once and if u miss it, then you hustle very hard to get it — Efiba Progress

Richards then pulled the pen and ink well close. — Julie Garwood

For example, a telegram is a "lightning-letter"; a wireless telegram is a "not-have-wire-lightning-communication"; a fountain-pen is a "self-flow-ink-water-brush"; a typewriter is a "strike-letter-machine". Most of these neologisms are similar in the modern languages of China and Japan. — Wolfram Eberhard

Sometimes my feelings are so hot that I have to take the pen and put them out on paper to keep them from setting me afire inside; then all that ink and labor are wasted because I can't print the results — Mark Twain

We can ask and ask but we can't have again what once seemed ours for ever - the way things looked, that church alone in the fields, a bed on a belfry floor, a remembered voice, the touch of a hand, a loved face. They've gone and you can only wait for the pain to pass.
All this happened so long ago. And I never returned, never wrote, never met anyone who might have given me news of Oxgodby. So, in memory, it stays as I left it, a sealed room furnished by the past, airless, still, ink long dry on a put-down pen.
But this was something I knew nothing of as I closed the gate and set off across the meadow. — J.L. Carr

I work with pen and paper. That's my favorite way to write. I love the way the ink sinks into the wood, soaks into the wood pulp. There's something about that process that's so organic. — Tom Robbins

Still, she assured herself as she unpacked her suitcase on the bed, Marx wrote his Manifesto one word at a time, with but pen and ink. Modest tools that moved a world! So shall we. — Mercedes Lackey

I keep drinking the ink from my pen and i'm balancing history books up on my head but it all boils down to one quotable phrase if you love something give it away — Conor Oberst

They done
Wrong
Like ink from a busted pen
Thrown away 'cause of someone else
Used up
But he come back
Dressed in night
Fine as a king
With his queen
The wrong
Made right
So right. — Kristin Cast

My earlier metaphor had been wrong, I discovered. The splash of ink from the pen dropping onto the page looked nothing like a spray of blood at all. — Lyndsay Faye