Writing Is Thinking Quotes & Sayings

Thinking is the activity I love best, and writing to me is simply thinking through my fingers. I can write up to 18 hours a day. Typing 90 words a minute, I've done better than 50 pages a day. Nothing interferes with my concentration. You could put an orgy in my office and I wouldn't look up-well, maybe once. — Isaac Asimov

I think a lot of young aspiring writers get misdirected; they think 'I ought to write this, even though I enjoy reading that'. What you have to do is write what you enjoy reading. — Jeffery Deaver

I felt like you can write forever, but you have a short time to raise a family. And I think a family is a lot more important than writing. — Ken Kesey

Everything is super personal. Basically all of the songs are 'this is my life and what I feel about it.' That's how my brain works and thinks about things. It's really strange because I never really think about what I want to write about - it sort of just comes out. I literally say whatever is in my brain. — Elena Tonra

I do not allow fan-fiction. The characters are copyrighted. It upsets me terribly to even think about fan-fiction with my characters. I advise my readers to write your own original stories with your own characters. It is absolutely essential that you respect my wishes. — Anne Rice

Songwriting is ... all about intuition - this thing pops into your head for a reason and it's up to you to follow it. It's like there's a spirit, or intuitive network, that comes through all of us, but most people don't take the time to think about it or remember it. These little things pop into our heads - it's just a process of intuition. The initial thought comes in a baby state, and you work on that some more. — Jim James

You're writing, you're coasting, and you're thinking, 'This is the best thing I've ever written, and it's coming so easily, and these characters are so great.' You put it aside for whatever reason, and you open it up a week later and the characters have turned to cardboard and the book has completely fallen apart," she says. "That's the moment of truth for every writer: Can I go on from here and make this book into something? I think it separates the writers from the nonwriters. And I think it's the reason a lot of people have that unfinished manuscript around the house, that albatross. — Jacqueline Woodson

Yeah, for me there are other challenges that aren't musical too. Like you just don't have as many people to feed off of energy wise, you are loading in and out and you are driving yourself more. Most of the challenges that count are the musical ones. I don't know why people come out to the shows, but I never think that it is to hear me play the guitar and sing. I think it must be in the writing and the presentation, which are the areas that I feel most comfortable. — Stephen Kellogg

Saki says that youth is like hors d'oeuvres: you are so busy thinking of the next courses you don't notice it. When you've had them, you wish you'd had more hors d'oeuvres. — Philip Larkin

For me, a play is a form of writing which isn't complete until it is interpreted by actors. But it's still a form of writing. And so most of my time is spent thinking about how to write a sentence. — Wallace Shawn

If a scene or a section gets the better of you and you still think you want it-bypass it and go on. When you have finished the whole you can come back to it and then you may find that the reason it gave trouble is because it didn't belong there. — John Steinbeck

If you are trying to decide among a few people to fill a position hire the best writer. it doesn't matter if the person is marketer, salesperson, designer, programmer, or whatever, their writing skills will pay off. That's because being a good writer is about more than writing clear writing. Clear writing is a sign of clear thinking. great writers know how to communicate. they make things easy to understand. they can put themselves in someone else's shoes. they know what to omit. And those are qualities you want in any candidate. Writing is making a comeback all over our society ... Writing is today's currency for good ideas. — Jason Fried

I regret that there aren't more short stories in other magazines. But in a certain way, I think the disappearance of the short-story template from everyone's head can be freeing. Partly because there's no mass market for stories, the form is up for grabs. It can be many, many things. So the anthology is very much intended for students, but I think we're all in the position of writing students now. Very few people are going around with a day-to-day engagement with the short story. — Lorin Stein

Reading all my old love letters was disorienting. You remember thinking the thoughts and writing the words but, man, you can't TOUCH those feelings. Its like they belonged to someone else. Someone you don't even know. I'm aware, in an intellectual way. That I felt all those things about him, but this emotions are far away now.
What's so strange to me is that I can't even force my heart back to that place where I felt that all consuming passion. That makes me feel distant from myself. Who WAS I then? Will I ever be able to get back to that place? Reading the letters again made me wonder: Which is the real me? The one who saw the world in that emotionally saturated way, or the me who sees it the way I do now? — Bill Shapiro

To write is to think, and to write well is to think well, — David McCullough

I think actually singing the words is more therapeutic than just sitting down to write them, because then you are letting it out, and it's coming from your gut. — Dave Grohl

My writing process is a mix of research, personal experiences, washing the dishes, raising kids while thinking - then writing. — Jean Craighead George

The real danger of writing a great song when you're on something is that it might get you thinking that the only way to repeat that is by only writing when you're high. — Barry Mann

Clear writing is universal. People talk about writing down to an audience or writing up to an audience; I think that's nonsense. If you write in a way that is clear, transparent, and elegant, it will reach everyone. — Malcolm Gladwell

The gotta, as in: "I think I'll stay up another fifteen-twenty minutes, honey, I gotta see how this chapter comes out." Even though the guy who says it spent the day at work thinking about getting laid and knows the odds are good his wife is going to be asleep when he finally gets up to the bedroom. The gotta, as in: "I know I should be starting supper now - he'll be mad if it's TV dinners again - but I gotta see how this ends." I gotta know will she live. I gotta know will he catch the shitheel who killed his father. I gotta know if she finds out her best friend's screwing her husband. The gotta. Nasty as a hand-job in a sleazy bar, fine as a fuck from the world's most talented call-girl. Oh boy it was bad and oh boy it was good and oh boy in the end it didn't matter how rude it was or how crude it was because in the end it was just like the Jacksons said on that record - don't stop til you get enough. — Stephen King

We live in the best of worlds. But still, it's like we've lost something on the way to here: a sense of life. I can't know for sure, I might be the only one who's lost it. Maybe everybody else is living the now, thinking they're having it well. Anyhow, that motivated me to write the books. — Karl Ove Knausgard

[Final diary entry:] Occupation is essential. And now with some pleasure I find that it's seven; and must cook dinner. Haddock and sausage meat. I think it is true that one gains a certain hold on sausage and haddock by writing them down. — Virginia Woolf

I didn't intend to write about totems or people searching. I tried not to constrain myself, and this is what I ended up with. There's this great Auden quote: "I look at what I write so I can see what I think." — Jonathan Safran Foer

I find in most novels no imagination at all. They seem to think the highest form of the novel is to write about marriage, because that's the most important thing there is for middle-class people. — Gore Vidal

Conspiracies fascinate me. When I visited the Rozabal shrine in Srinagar before writing my first book, I remember thinking that the person enshrined there was no ordinary mortal. History is rife with mysteries, and that visit ignited a fire to unveil some of them. — Ashwin Sanghi

It's a big thing to call yourself a poet. All I can say is that I have always written poems. I don't think I'm interested in any discussion about whether I'm a good poet, a bad poet or a great poet. But I am sure, I want to write great poems. I think every poet should want that. — Clive James

But now I want to say things that comfort me and that are a little free. For example: Thursdat is a day transparent as an insect's wing in the light. Just as Monday is a compact day. Ultimately, far beyond thought, I live from these ideas, if ideas is what they are. They are sensations that transform into ideas because I must use words. Even just using them mentally. The primary thought thinks with words. — Clarice Lispector

Much of the activity we think of as writing is, actually, getting ready to write. — Gail Godwin

A lot of the time, I write a lot of angry stuff, but then I don't want to be a finger-pointer - I'd rather be a cheerleader than a judge. I don't want to preach as if I'm in some position of righteousness, but I do want to speak my mind and scream at the clouds and shout out of the pit of hopelessness that I sometimes think the human race is in. — Dave Matthews

If you want to "get in touch with your feelings," fine, talk to yourself. We all do. But if you want to communicate with another thinking human being, get in touch with your thoughts. Put them in order, give them a purpose, use them to persuade, to instruct, to discover, to seduce. The secret way to do this is to write it down, and then cut out the confusing parts. — William Safire

The only thing worth thinking about, when I write a story, is whether I like it, whether I want to write it, whether it excites me. — Theodora Goss

I really enjoy writing lyrics, I enjoy harmonies and I enjoy hearing the organic side of production because I have to do so much non- organic for a living for other artists, it's just a break for me, for my ears and it confuses people that think my music is supposed to sound like the stuff I do for my day job, but that's just people that don't know me. — Butch Walker

Now, I know what you're thinking: Isn't this the guy who said, "Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy"? Well, not exactly. This quote has been somewhat paraphrased and hijacked by many of our nation's craft breweries, and rightly so. It may be revisionist writing, but I for one am okay with it. What Franklin did write was, "Behold the rain which descends from heaven upon our vineyards, there it enters the roots of the vines, to be changed into wine, a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy." Beer, wine . . . come on. Six of one, etcetera. He also coined the euphemism for drunkenness "Halfway to Concord," which tickles me to no end. That, my friends, is fun with words. — Nick Offerman

Creative writing teachers should be purged until every last instructor who has uttered the words 'Write what you know' is confined to a labor camp. Please, talented scribblers, write what you don't. The blind guy with the funny little harp who composed The Iliad, how much combat do you think he saw? — P. J. O'Rourke

And it's kind of my own fault too, in the sense that I've used my own life as a literary device so much. I think people feel very comfortable reviewing the idea of me, as opposed to what I've actually written. I find that most of the time, when people write about one of my books, they're really just writing about what they think I may or may not represent, as sort of this abstract entity. Is that unfair? Not really. If I put myself in this position where I'm going to kind of weave elements of memoir into almost everything, well, I suppose that's going to happen. — Chuck Klosterman

Jamie's viewpoint is expressed almost entirely in metaphor: If she was broken, she would slash him with her jagged edges, reckless as a drunkard with a shattered bottle. He's using physical language, but he isn't talking about the physical details of the situation. Claire alludes to her emotion and shows it by her actions, but Jamie is thinking directly in pure emotions. — Diana Gabaldon

Naturally my stories are about women - I'm a woman. I don't know what the term is for men who write mostly about men. I'm not always sure what is meant by "feminist." In the beginning I used to say, well, of course I'm a feminist. But if it means that I follow a kind of feminist theory, or know anything about it, then I'm not. I think I'm a feminist as far as thinking that the experience of women is important. That is really the basis of feminism. — Alice Munro

I think it's good when people don't write good things about your work. I mean, what a great compliment it is to be called a charlatan. — Julian Schnabel

I think age is really changing how I write and the themes that I connect with. But there are also things I'm really intrigued about. — Abi Morgan

I actually do think the history is so epic that it actually kind of writes itself. — David Talbot

The best visual book I can think of is Lynda Barry's What It Is, but although I refer to it all the time it's not a creative writing book per se. — Jeff VanderMeer

Writing the novel felt so private to me! I think publishing a novel is quite public and exposing, and what's a little frightening to me right now is the fact that it feels so entirely opposed to the privacy that is writing. — Garth Greenwell

Write a lot. And I mean a ridiculous amount. You have to write so much that you don't mind throwing away and changing things that you've written - which is the second thing you have to do. A lot of young writers are very precious about their words. Don't be - you've got to be ready to burn stuff. You're not as good as you think you are, at least not yet. The more you write, the faster you'll write, and the less you'll mind throwing stuff out. — Josh Lieb

I do not think that one is likely to write a good biography unless one feels some sympathy with its subject ... — Iris Origo

I have no idea whether what I write will be of the remotest interest to anyone else. Some mornings when I read what I wrote the previous day I think it's fairly entertaining; other times I think it's pure rubbish. The main thing is not to take any notice, not to be elated or upset, just keep going. — Maeve Binchy

If I wrote about "being [abstraction]" I would be ignoring existential issues (such as death, limited-time, the arbitrary nature of the universe, the mystery of consciousness) that I feel affect me most in my life and think about most of the time. Another reason is that it doesn't seem specific or accurate, to me, to write about "being [abstraction]." I think there are some other reasons. — Tao Lin

Sometimes I think it is ... frustration with life as it is lived day to day that compels me to write such long letters to people who seldom reply in kind, if indeed they reply at all. Somehow by compressing and editing the events of my life, I infuse them with a dramatic intensity totally lacking at the time, but oddly enough I find that years later what I remember is not the event as I lived it but as I described it in a letter. — Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey

I have fallen in love with writing, unknowingly. Instead of thinking whether people will like what I write or not, I decide to write only for one person- myself! I told myself that 'I as an author is going to entertain I as an audience.' And everything changed that day!

When you find your passion, don't succumb to the pressure of succeeding.Follow your passion just for yourself and for the sheer joy of it. You will see amazing things will follow- that's a guarantee. — Vishwas Mudagal

I think it's fine for a singer to sing someone else's song. But the thing I don't like is when a singer that can write songs starts getting someone else to do it for them. — Howard Lawrence

Writing is like sex. The more you think about it, the harder it is to do. It's better not to think about it so much and just let it happen. — Stephen King

One of the few ways I can almost be certain I'll understand something is by sitting down and writing about it. Because by forcing yourself to write about it and putting it down in words, you can't avoid having your say on the subject. You might be wrong, but you have to think about it very intensely to write about it. — Hunter S. Thompson

Hen, there's such a temptation to just constantly write things that are going to make the fans happy. Sometimes it takes a little bit of unhappiness to make those happy pay-offs work better. That's something that is fascinating to us and I think has really changed the way that stories are told. — Jeff Pinkner

It's tough to make funny films. And the truth is, with this process, especially if you write your own movie, then you're giving three years of your life to it. And so, I just have to be sure that when I embark on it that I'm happy to think that in three years' time I'm going to be sitting in a room on the tenth floor of an odd office building at Ginsberg Libby talking about it. So I'm keen not to jump into it too quickly and just make sure it's something that I really want. — Dan Mazer

I tend to have a hard time working on pieces long before they're due. That's why I think the fact that I write a column is really good for me - the column has to be done, and there's no getting around it. — James Surowiecki

It is absurd to think that the only way to tell if a poem is lasting is to wait and see if it lasts. The right reader of a good poem can tell the moment it strikes him that he has taken an immortal wound-that he will never get over it. — Robert Frost

Sit down and write it down with a pen and then make up your mind you are going to do it. Don't spend any time thinking of why you can't. The fun is not in getting it, the fun is in growing. Goals are to help us grow, goals are to help us get. The getting is a site benefit; the growth is the real benefit. — Bob Proctor

I think that the song, the song "Stand By Me" is one of those songs that ... and someone asked me, what was you thinking about or what was you feeling about? It's something that, songwriters just write songs. It's like an artist that paints. They paint what they feel. It's not, it's not about how many of these painting I'll sell it's just how they feel at the moment. And that's how I wrote "Stand By Me". — Ben E. King

Despite my vast interest in other universes and new ideas and space, travel and time travel, which by the way I think is impossible, the basic thing is human character, which is the main thing of most writers. — Philip Jose Farmer

It is perfectly legitimate to write novels which are essentially prose poems, but in the end, I think, a novel is like a car, and if you buy a car and grow flowers in it, you're forgetting that the car is designed to take you somewhere else. — Robert Harris

I think I'm trying to write truthfully about life, and naturalism, or the way people normally talk in movies, is a convention. It's not the way people talk in life at all. — Wallace Shawn

Another strand of my writing is the importance of the idea. If you think about fiction writing as a spectrum, where at one end of the spectrum in the infrared, are the story tellers, and the people for whom creation of wonderful characters and telling a good story is the most important thing. — Alan Lightman

I don't think I'd ever write anything that I don't also direct just because it's so hard and painful to write as it is. — Cary Fukunaga

Time allows change to take place and the very evolution of the universe is what requires some conception of time. Mathematically can we write down a universe that doesn't have time? Sure. Do we think that would be realised in the larger reality that is out there? None of us take that possibility seriously. — Brian Greene

But being able to talk to so many patients from so many walks of life gives a tremendous window into people's lives. This is not to say I want to write about individual patients, but I think that after listening to the concerns of people who are so different from me, I can more realistically portray characters who are so different from me. — Daniel Mason

I know who the real hero is, and it isn't me or brave Lanaya. It's an old man with a white beard and a walking stick and a heart so big it won't let him stop thinking he can change the world by writing down things in a book no one will ever read. — Rodman Philbrick

Phoenix sank to the desk chair and stared at her computer screen. "I don't know. I've lived like this for so long, it's who I am. Everything seems so stupid. Like, look at this girl,writing to Sasha. She's all" - he spoke in a falsetto voice - "'OMG!' and 'LOL!' and 'WTF?' and 'Girl, you should totes go out with Tyler in Telluride!'" He looked up at her."You're seventeen years old, and this is how seventeenyear-olds talk to each other. I'm a thousand years old, and this stuff is like alien-speak to me. If I found another Anabo,she'd be writing OMG and I'd be thinking, You're f'ing
kidding me. — Trinity Faegen

When I'm not writing, I'm thinking about writing. Filling pages and people with inspiration. When my thoughts don't want to rest on a page, we argue. We argue that one merely is ready just too comfortable playing in The Nile [denial] river. So we compromise. We grow,
water metaphors
and plant simile trees
of golden-almond
manifested love dreams.
Then at that moment, we forgot what we were arguing about.
Beauty can do that for you.
That's the beauty of writing. — Antonia Perdu

I think that there have been times, especially with writing songs, where you sit in a room with somebody, and they could be a very well-respected songwriter, but for whatever reason, the chemistry is just not right. — Dave Koz

Writing is always a way, for me, of coming to some sort of understanding that I can't reach otherwise.It forces you to think. It forces you to work the thing through. Nothing comes to us out of the blue, very easily. — Joan Didion

One of the things that is always difficult about a collaboration is that you don't necessarily find the same thing funny. And so the challenge becomes, how do you tell the other person that you don't think something's funny? The best collaborations tend to be when you are willing to be told that. But there's also ego involved, and so there's a lot of frustration in knowing that you're writing something, and the other person, on some level, needs to think that it's funny. — Michael Showalter

I didn't want to write unless I could say, and think for myself. I looked to peers that I not only respected but those that supported that. I finished becoming who I am today by sticking up for myself as a voice, but that is in part thanks to the huge role the good guys I chose to work with played in my professional development. Some really terrific human beings who loved horror welcomed me with open arms. — Karen Walton

In the minds of some people, writing is one thing, but thinking is quite another. If they define writing as spelling, the production of sentences with random meanings, and punctuation, then they might have a case. But who would accept such a definition? Writing is the production of meaning. Writing is thinking. — George Hillocks Jr.

In flight from intellectual heaviness, [he] arrives at intelligent weightlessness. Every notion is flipped this way and that; the answer to every question is yes and no; the proliferating examples from all the arts ... overwhelm the observations that they are designed to illustrate; the general impression in one of uncontrollable articulateness. [He] does not think his thoughts; he convenes them. There is not a sign of struggle anywhere. — Leon Wieseltier

The mysterious thing about writing poetry is that when you're - when things are going poorly, when you're not thinking well, even making two sentences together is extremely hard and I just can't make the connections. — Edward Hirsch

He was always saying, 'I wonder what Paul is doing.' When John and I were together, and this is about a week or two before our relationship ended, I remember him saying, 'Do you think I should write with Paul again?' I said, 'Absolutely. You should because you want to. The two of you as solo performers are good, but together you can't be beaten. — May Pang

I started the first drafts of the book during my sophomore year of college. I wasn't thinking at all about kids at the time. But I was thinking. A lot. About everything. I wish I could capture that head-space again; everything meant something to me in college. Every leaf, every sound, every lecture, every textbook. It's like I was on drugs, 24/7. I am glad I was able to pair that ceaseless pondering with plenty of time to write. What came of that time was the first draft of the novel, a lengthy, unnecessarily angst-driven pile of crap. Years later, with Zoloft, I approached the novel with a more level head, and came away with a much, much better novel. My advice to writers, I suppose, is write your novel when you feel like shit; edit when you feel great. — Caleb J. Ross

When I'm actually writing by hand, I get more of a sense of the rhythm of sentences, of syntax. The switch to the computer is when I actually start thinking about lines. That's the workhorse part. At that point, I'm being more mathematical about putting the poem on the page and less intuitive about the rhythm of the syntax. — Natasha Trethewey

It started off for me as just wanting to be an actor and sort of resenting in a weird way being expected to write as well as be a comedian and an improviser. And then you think about it for a minute, and I smartened up and realized that the only way to sustain a career is to generate your own material. Or to be in control of your career as best you can. And in allowing yourself to do that it opens up a whole new world of possibilities. And then you're like "Oh, producing is a thing." — Rob Corddry

Writing is an organized way of thinking. I don't know what I think about certain subjects, even today, until I sit down and try to write them. — Don DeLillo

History is what we read, write and think about the past. — Michael Howard

I think writing is a difficult thing and you need to suffer a little bit, even if it's just to sit there and think what an idiot you are and how anyone else could do this better than you can. — Brian Helgeland

There is nothing like writing to force you to think and get your thoughts straight. — Warren Buffett

There is an art of reading, as well as an art of thinking, and an art of writing. — Isaac D'Israeli

I don't really pursue writing songs for other people. I guess one of the things I always think about is a good line in a song should be something I can hear myself saying. — Craig Finn

Writing mysteries lets me get away with murder. I think 'the mystery' may be the greatest form for social criticism, simply because it is pedestrian. — Gregory McDonald

I still don't know how to express the really delicate personal stuff. People think that Plastic Ono is very personal, but there are some subtleties of emotions which I cannot seem to express in pop music, and it frustrates me. Maybe that's why I still search for other ways of expressing myself. Song writing is a limiting experience in some ways - writing down words that have to rhyme. — John Lennon

I write poems from dreams pretty frequently. It's limiting to think the poem has to come from a sensical lyric "I" stating things clearly or dramatically. This whole course is trying to say there are millions of ways to approach writing a poem. — Matthea Harvey

Well, that's it." I said after we had waited for another five minutes and found ourselves still in a state of pleasantly welcome existence. "The ChronoGuard has shut itself down and time travel is as it should be: technically, logically, and theoretically ... impossible." "Good thing, too," reply Landon. "It always made my head ache. In fact, I was thinking of doing self help book for science-fiction novelists eager to write about time travel. It would consist of a single word: Don't. — Jasper Fforde

Whatever the style is, I want to have a sense that the writer is thinking, and really trying to get at something, and that there's a sense of discovery as the writing goes along. — Lynne Tillman

I see myself as a novelist, period. I mean, the material I work with is what is classified as science fiction and fantasy, and I really don't think about these things when I'm writing. I'm just thinking about telling a story and developing my characters. — Roger Zelazny

I think if you can write a play, or produce a play, the first step toward success [is] if people don't want to kill themselves in the lobby. Now there must be four or five other steps, but that's the first. — Jean Kerr

Writing is refined thinking. — Stephen King

When ambition enters, creativity disappears - because an ambitious man cannot be creative, because an ambitious man cannot love any activity for its own sake. While he is painting he is looking ahead; he is thinking, 'When am I going to get a Nobel Prize?' When he is writing a novel, he is looking ahead. He is always in the future - and a creative person is always in the present. — Rajneesh

Once a piece of writing gets to a moment where it's not going to get much better than it already is, marinate it. If you still like the piece, send it out and see what others think. If not, it's time to put it away and forget about it for a while. — David Starkey

I think the only person a writer has an obligation to is himself. If what I write doesn't fulfill something in me, if I don't honestly feel it's the best I can do, then I'm miserable. — Truman Capote

I am glad that the country world ... retains a power to use our English tongue. It is a part of its sense of reality, of its vocabulary of definite terms, and of its habit of earthly common sense. I find this country writing an excellent corrective of the urban vocabulary of abstractions and of the emotion disguised as thinking which abstractions and humbug have loosed upon the world. May there always be such things as a door, a milk pail, and a loaf of bread, and words to do them honor. — Henry Beston

What concerns me alone I only think, what concerns my friends I tell them, what can be of interest to only a limited public I write, and what the world ought to know is printed ... — Georg C. Lichtenberg

What people who don't write don't understand is that they think you make up the line consciously - but you don't. It proceeds from your unconscious. So it's the same surprise to you when it emerges as it is to the audience when the comic says it. I don't think of the joke and then say it. I say it and then realize what I've said. And I laugh at it, because I'm hearing it for the first time myself. — Woody Allen

I hate thinking about it, teaching about it, and writing about it. But the plain truth is that hell is real and real people go there for eternity. — Bill Hybels

I think the tendency to over-explain and over describe is one of the most common failings in fantasy. It's an unfortunate piece of Tolkien's legacy. Don't get me wrong, Tolkien was a great worldbuilder, but he got a little caught up describing his world at times, at the expense of the overall story. — Patrick Rothfuss