Nonfiction Writing Quotes

One of underestimated tasks in nonfiction writing is to impose narrative shape on an unwieldy mass of material. ~ William Zinsser

Writing - the act of one person giving a piece of their soul to another. ~ J. Spredemann

I tend to read more nonfiction, really, because when I'm writing I don't like to read other fiction. ~ Irvine Welsh

We can no longer allow them to write just stories and poems; we must teach them the forms of nonfiction writing as well, specifically that of writing on demand. ~ Troy Hicks

....and on occasion I like to write in pencil, because I need to know that I can erase the words, even if I never do. ~ Bruce Black

There's no point in writing my kind of stuff, when they're printing that kind of stuff. So I gave up and started drinking. ~ Charles Bukowski

I wish my prose to be transparent-I don't want the reader to stumble over me; I want him to look through what I'm saying to what I'm describing. I don't want him ever to say, Oh, goodness, how nicely written this is. That would be a failure. ~ V.S. Naipaul

But the commission is now. The time to speak is when the Spirit of God boils the message so hot within you that it must come out. The time to write is when God Almighty presses his thumb against your heart and forces the words out like a steaming geyser. ~ Eric Ludy

I'm a self-taught musician so how I read music is kind of very weak and I kind of read my own version of tablature, I write my own crappy reminders on what I'm playing. ~ Jason Mraz

I would rather spend money on something, that fulfills me for eternity. Rather, than something that fulfills me for only an hour or two. ~ Mary Sage Nguyen

Here's the truth about organic writing: It's just story planning by another name. ~ Larry Brooks

I write my lyrics the day I sing the song, so even when I have the basic things, I'm thinking what can I change, what can I add, how many harmonies can I do. ~ Kirk Windstein

And to write is to sow and to reap at the same time. ~ Elie Wiesel

Someone Should Write Me a Love Poem but I'm Stuck Doing It Myself ~ Daphne Gottlieb

It's such a wonderful feeling to watch a child discover that reading is a marvelous adventure rather than a chore. I know that many writers for children say they do not write specifically with a child audience in mind ... This isn't true for me. I am very aware of my audience. Sometimes I can almost see them out there reacting as I write. Sometimes I think, 'Oh, you're going to like this part. ~ Zilpha Keatley Snyder

Never write a poem about anything that ought to have a poem written about it. ~ Richard Hugo

Amazing, really, to think of what a man could achieve with the simple ability to put pen to paper and spin a decent yarn. ~ Graham Moore

I've had a very sheltered life. What can happen to you if you stay home writing all day? ~ R.L. Stine

Poetry expands the senses and keeps them in prime condition. It keeps you aware of your nose, your eye, your ear, your tongue, your hand. ~ Ray Bradbury

I began to write when I was seven, and I have been writing off and on ever since. It is still off and on. You can say that when I am on, when I know I have a book which I am going to write, then I write two thousand words a day. That's so many pages longhand. ~ William Golding

I didn't write my poems because I wanted to, they were wrung from me. I had to write them. ~ Maxine Kumin

Of snowy afternoons,
waiting, watching and waiting.

To see her small and larger than life.

She is both fragile and determined,
like a paper umbrella in the rain. ~ Jessica De La Davies

Writing music uses a whole different process that involves a lot of noodling and just seeing what comes. ~ Charles De Lint

If a book falls in the woods and nobody read it, was it ever written? ~ Neil Leckman

I don't have to worry about writing jokes. I just tell stories about things that have happened to me. As long as I'm alive and I'm living and I'm experiencing different things every day, the show will always change. ~ Gabriel Iglesias

To try something longer, I entered a half-hour radio drama contest with the national public broadcaster, CBC. To my surprise, I won. And that opened doors in film and television, because that broadcaster was looking to cultivate new Canadian talent, especially women who could write. ~ Karen Walton

Funny + sad is what I'm pitching for, every time. ~ Nick Hornby

I am partly not conscious of structure with my movies, but this is when I am writing. I leave my mind very free, and then I correct it after. ~ Pedro Almodovar

Being a professional writer is a lot like being a hooker. You'd better find out if you're any good at it before you start charging for it. ~ Sharyn McCrumb

This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It's like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals–sounds that say listen to this, it is important. ~ Gary Provost

Half the rhymes you write, you're saying that you're better than the other MC. That's how we keep the craft sharp. ~ Ice-T

You have the knowledge and ability to live sustainably on this planet but it's a hard road from where you are now. It's no longer a matter of what you know - you know enough. From here on, it's a test of whether you care - do you care enough? ~ Mark Avery

Ivanov had been a party member since 1902. Back then he had tried to write stories in the manner of Tolstoy, Chekhov, Gorky, or rather he had tried to plagiarize them without much success, which led him, after long reflection (a whole summer night), to the astute decision that he should write in the manner of Odoevsky and Lazhechnikov. Fifty percent Odoevsky and fifty percent Lazhecknikov. This went over well, in part because readers, their memories mostly faulty, had forgotten poor Odoevsky (1803-1869) and poor Lazhechnikov (1792-1869), who died the same year, and in part because literary criticism, as keen as ever, neither extrapolated nor made the connection nor noticed a thing. ~ Roberto Bolano

My first job out of college was as an editorial assistant in a New York publishing house. Being an editorial assistant is the purgatory would-be editors must endure before they can ascend the ladder and begin acquiring books on their own. I spent a year filing paperwork, writing copy, and typing rejection letters. ~ Lincoln Child

I write because it's a beautiful habit ~ Anamika Mishra

One of the things that always comes up in my writing is the search for freedom, especially in women. I always write about women who are marginalized, who have no means or resources and somehow manage to get out of those situations with incredible strength - and that is more important than anything. ~ Isabel Allende

A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it. Writers know words are their way towards truth and freedom, and so they use them with care, with thought, with fear, with delight. By using words well they strengthen their souls. Story-tellers and poets spend their lives learning that skill and art of using words well. And their words make the souls of their readers stronger, brighter, deeper. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

And then there's this: no matter how many bullshit stories you have or don't have, there are no guarantees in life. Nothing is owed to us. That "not knowing" is scary, but the tools to help us--writing, breathing, yoga, connecting--are all we have. And honestly, sometimes the tools are Netflix and coffee as well as breathing and yoga and writing. But we must have tools. ~ Jennifer Pastiloff

Knowing Chris Bennett's Writing as I do, I expected Only Superhuman to have an imaginative plot and a compelling superheroine in Emry Blair. What I hadn't expected was for the backstory to make so much sense. Usually science is the first causality of superhero stories, tossed aside with the breezy rationalization: 'Hey, it's comics!' Only Superhuman is, to my knowledge, the first hard science superhero story. And the Story is the better for it. ~ Mike W. Barr

I shall be as brief as I can, for it is not by piling up detail that I hope to achieve my picture, but by putting the emphasis where I think it belongs. ~ Robertson Davies

When I'm writing something, if there's a part that's good for me, then I'll play it. Otherwise, I don't. And I notice that there are less and less parts for me in my own writing. ~ Woody Allen

Introverts need to trust their gut and share their ideas as powerfully as they can. This does not mean aping extroverts; ideas can be shared quietly, they can be communicated in writing, they can be packaged into highly produced lectures, they can be advanced by allies. The trick for introverts is to honor their own styles instead of allowing themselves to be swept up by prevailing norms. ~ Susan Cain

My boarding school experience was the only thing I had strong enough feelings to write about for hundreds and hundreds of pages. I can still smell the formaldehyde of the fetal pigs in biology. ~ Curtis Sittenfeld

I like writing better. Because I don't have to wear makeup, I don't have to be thin, and I don't have to remember lines. ~ Fran Drescher

I meant to write about death, only life came breaking in as usual ~ Virginia Woolf

Storytellers are powerful and we are all storytellers. ~ Tsara Shelton

We all have an ongoing narrative inside our heads, the narrative that is spoken aloud if a friend asks a question. That narrative feels deeply natural to me. We also hang on to scraps of dialogue. Our memories don't usually serve us up whole scenes complete with dialogue. So I suppose I'm saying that I like to work from what a character is likely to remember, from a more interior place. ~ Lydia Davis

When I wrote 'Dear Fatty,' I realised that sitting and writing alone is an absolute joy. ~ Dawn French

about clichés. Avoid them like the plague. ~ Khaled Hosseini