Quotes On Writing - A Collection of Famous Writers

Franz Kafka

"A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity."

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"Anyone who keeps the ability to see  beauty never grows old."

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"I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we are reading doesn't wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for? We need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe from the frozen sea inside us.

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"I need solitude for my writing; not 'like a hermit' - that wouldn't be enough - but like a dead man."

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"Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly."

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"I am free and that is why I am lost."

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"Writing is utter solitude, the descent into the cold abyss of oneself."

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"You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet."

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"To write prescriptions is easy but to come to an understanding with people is hard."

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"Paths are made by walking."

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"I write differently from what I speak, I speak differently from what I think, I think differently from the way I ought to think, and so it all proceeds into deepest darkness."

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"Writing is a deeper sleep than death. Just as one wouldn't pull a corpse from its grave, I can't be dragged from my desk at night."

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"Writing is a sweet, wonderful reward."

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"They say ignorance is bliss... they're wrong."

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"Isolation is a way to know ourselves."

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"By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired."

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"A mind is like a parachute. It doesn't work if it isn't open."

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Productivity is being able to do things that you were never able to do before."

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"Writing [is] a form of prayer."

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"From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. That is the point that must be reached."

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"Writing sustains me. But would' it be better to say it sustains this kind of life? Which doesn't mean life is any better when I do' write. On the contrary, it is far worse, wholly unbearable, and inevitably ends in madness. This is, of course, only on the assumption that I am a writer even when I do' write - which is indeed the case; and a non-writing writer is, in fact, a monster courting insanity."

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"Many a book is like a key to unknown chambers within the castle of one's own self."

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"Books are a narcotic."

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"Expressed idea loses it's meaning at once. Written idea gets a new meaning."

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"Each of us has his own way of emerging from the underworld, mine is by writing. That's why the only way I can keep going, if at all, is by writing, not through rest and sleep. I am far more likely to achieve peace of mind through writing than the capacity to write through peace."

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"Writer speaks a stench."

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"Start with what is right rather than what is acceptable."

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"I never wish to be easily defined."

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