Writing Quotes of the Day

“Writing is not primarily escape, but use.”—Henry James

“I went for years not finishing anything. Because, of course, when you finish something you can be judged...I had poems which were re-written so many times I suspect it was just a way of avoiding sending them out.”—Erica Jong

“Most people don't realize that writing is a craft. You have to take your apprenticeship in it like everything else.”—Cole Porter

“Poetry ennobles the heart and the eyes, and unveils the meaning of all things upon which the heart and eyes dwell.”—Edith Sitwell

“Poetry should be like fireworks, packed carefully and artfully, ready to explode with unpredictable effects.”—Lilian Moore

“What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us.”—Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say.”—Anais Nin

“If you're not trying to communicate, you sure don't belong in the writing game.”—Ursula K. LeGuin

“The only thing I was fit for was to be a writer, and this notion rested solely on my suspicion that I would never be fit for real work, and that writing didn't require any.”—Russell Baker

“The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself.”—Joan Didion