Quotes On Writing - A Collection of Famous Writers

C.S. Lewis

"You can make anything by writing."

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"We read to know we are not alone."

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"I do not sit down at my desk to put into verse something that is already clear in my mind. If it were clear in my mind, I should have no incentive or need to write about it. We do not write in order to be understood, we write in order to understand."

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"Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say infinitely when you mean very, otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite."

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"Child, to say the very thing you really mean, the whole of it, nothing more or less or other than what you really mean, that's the whole art and joy of words."

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"The great thing is to be always reading but not to get bored - treat it not like work, more as a vice! Your book bill ought to be your biggest extravagance."

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"Now, at last, they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story no one on earth has ever read, which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before."

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"Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be orignal: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it."

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"Write about what really interest you, whether it is real things or imaginary things, and nothing else."

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"If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world."

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"I have leaned too much on the idea of being able to write poetry, and if this is a frost, I shall be rather stranded."

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"I write for the unlearned about things in which I am unlearned myself."

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"Don't say it was delightful, make us say delightful when we've read the description."

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"Almost anything can be read into any book if you are determined enough."

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"Always try to use the language so as to make quite clear what you mean and make sure your sentence couldn't mean anything else."

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"I never exactly made a book. It's rather like taking dictation. I was giving things to say."

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"If they won't write the kind of book we like to read, we shall have to write them ourselves."

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"The world does not need more Christian literature. What it needs is more Christians writing good literature."

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"You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream."

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"Whenever you are fed up with life, start writing: Ink is the great cure for all human ills, as I have found out long ago."

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"Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see."