Writing Profound Quotes

The style of writing required in the great world is distinguished by a free and daring grace, a careless security, a fine and sharp polish, a delicate and perfect taste; while that fitted for the people is characterized by a vigorous natural fulness, a profound depth of feeling, and an engaging naivete. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

I write these words to bear witness to the primacy of resistance struggle in any situation of domination (even within family life); to the strength and power that emerges from sustained resistance and the profound conviction that these forces can be healing, can protect us from dehumanization and despair. ~ Bell Hooks

Clear writers, like fountains, do not seem so deep as they are; the turbid look the most profound. ~ Walter Savage Landor

My grandfather died in the war, my family went through the war, and it affected my parents in really profound ways. I've always wanted to write about that period - in some ways to digest it for myself, something that defined me but that I didn't go through. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Writers of novels are so busy being solitary that they haven't time to meet one another. But then, a writer learns nothing from a writer, conversationally. If a writer has anything witty, profound or quotable to say he doesn't say it. He's no fool. He writes it. ~ Edna Ferber

Writing is the profound pleasure and being read the superficial. ~ Virginia Woolf

He that knows himself, knows others; and he that is ignorant of himself, could not write a very profound lecture on other men's heads. ~ Charles Caleb Colton

Too often we take notes on writing, we think about writing but never do it. I want you to walk into the heart of the storm, written words dripping off hair, eyelids, hanging from hands. ~ Natalie Goldberg

You see, writing down your meanderings gets something started deep in the recesses of your brain. That distant part of your mind knows that you want to write stories or poems or plays and not endless jabber, and it will get to work. It may take a while. You may have to write this stuff for hours or days or weeks, but eventually that subterranean part of your brain will come through and begin to send you ideas. ~ Gail Carson Levine

One of my favourite things to do when I write is to bring a sense of wonder to a normal everyday setting... Yes, there are magical elements, but there are also very down-to-earth elements and often what shines through isn't the magic, but the lanterns that the characters light against the dark... If you substitute the words "fairy tale" or "myth" for "fantasy," the reason I use these elements in my own work is that they create resonances that illuminate solutions to the real world struggle without the need for an authorial voice to point them out. Magic never solves the problems–we have to do that on our own–but in fiction it allows the dialogue to have a much more organic approach than the talking heads one can encounter in fiction that doesn't utilize the same tools.

[from the interview Year's Best 2012: Charles de Lint on "A Tangle of Green Men"] ~ Charles De Lint

The Internet and all its lures are much, much harder than anything I've ever encountered. If you're writing on a computer, the very instrument you're writing on is already tainted by the world out there in all its permutations. ~ Dani Shapiro

And once upon a time I wondered: Is writing epic fantasy not somehow a betrayal? Did I not somehow do a disservice to my own reality by paying so much attention to the power fantasies of disenchanted white men?

But. Epic fantasy is not merely what Tolkien made it.

This genre is rooted in the epic - and the truth is that there are plenty of epics out there which feature people like me. Sundiata's badass mother. Dihya, warrior queen of the Amazighs. The Rain Queens. The Mino Warriors. Hatshepsut's reign. Everything Harriet Tubman ever did. And more, so much more, just within the African components of my heritage. I haven't even begun to explore the non-African stuff. So given all these myths, all these examinations of the possible… how can I not imagine more? How can I not envision an epic set somewhere other than medieval England, about someone other than an awkward white boy? How can I not use every building-block of my history and heritage and imagination when I make shit up?

And how dare I disrespect that history, profane all my ancestors' suffering and struggles, by giving up the freedom to imagine that they've won for me. ~ N.K. Jemisin

Writing a screenplay is like climbing a mountain. When you're climbing, all you can see is the rock in front of you and the rock directly above you. You can't see where you've come from or where you're going. ~ Syd Field

I did the drawing and writing - for five years. I made a lot of short films the whole while and I made a promise to myself in front of the mirror that I would stop drawing when I signed my first contract for a feature film. ~ Patrice Leconte

If you behave like a celebrity, then people will treat you like a celebrity, and if you don't, they won't. There's not much to write about me in the tabloids. ~ Cillian Murphy

I love puppies, and I love animals in general. Besides that, I do martial arts: extreme martial arts. I also play real guitar and drums, and sing. And I'm taking some college classes, hoping to major in English and creative writing. ~ Cameron Monaghan

Study Chairman Mao's writings, follow his teachings and act according to his instructions. ~ Lin Biao

Peace. Profound happiness, unlike fleeting pleasures, is spiritual by nature. It depends on the happiness of others, and it is based on love and tenderness. We ~ Dalai Lama XIV

If you find yourself imitating another writer, that doesn't have to be a bad thing, especially if you are a young or a new writer. However, you should be conscious of exactly how you are imitating him - word choice, sentence structure, motifs? - and think about why you're doing it. ~ Poppy Z. Brite

If you're playing God, you need to get it right. ~ Larry Brooks

Deleuze's findings are confirmed by those of an experienced woman psychiatrist who for many years has made a study of automatic writing. In conversation this lady has informed me that, sooner or later, most automatists produce scripts in which certain metaphysical ideas are set forth. The theme of these scripts is always the same: namely, the the ground of the individual soul is identical with the divine Ground of all being. Returning to their normal state, the automatists read what they have written and often find it in complete disharmony with what they have always believed. ~ Aldous Huxley

Each of my books took roughly one and a half years to write. Some may have taken a shorter time to write the draft and a longer time to revise, while others were the opposite. ~ Alex Flinn

There seem to be many causes of depression. One cause is profound loss, grief. Economic hardship we know is linked to depression. We don't have a full picture. ~ Irving Kirsch

I started writing plays in around 1967, and at a certain point, I thought, 'I'm writing plays, I should learn about acting and what it is.' So I went to the HB Studio in New York, and I was there for about nine months. ~ Wallace Shawn

The Government, being resolved to undertake the political and moral purification of our public life, are creating and securing the conditions necessary for a really profound revival of religious life ~ Adolf Hitler

The poem is not, as someone put it, deflective of entry. But the real question is, 'What happens to the reader once he or she gets inside the poem?' That's the real question for me, is getting the reader into the poem and then taking the reader somewhere, because I think of poetry as a kind of form of travel writing. ~ Billy Collins

Southern poets are still writing narrative poems, poems in forms, dramatic poems. ~ Robert Morgan

Why are those who knew him, when they pass from the memory of a young man, sensitive and gay, to the work – novels and writings – surprised to pass into a nocturnal world, a world of cold torment, a world not without light but in which light blinds at the same time that it illuminates; gives hope, but makes hope the shadow of anguish and despair? Why is it that he who, in his work, passes from the objectivity of the narratives to the intimacy of the Diary, descends into a still darker night in which the cries of a lost man can be heard? Why does it seem that the closer one comes to his heart, the closer one comes to an unconsoled center from which a piercing flash sometimes bursts forth, an excess of pain, excess of joy? Who has the right to speak of Kafka without making this enigma heard, an enigma that speaks with the complexity, with the simplicity, of enigma? ~ Maurice Blanchot

At seventeen I tried to write poetry confining myself solely to Anglo-Saxon words - don't know if it helped, but it made me more concrete ... ~ John Geddes

When I was younger I was obsessed with writing, so even if I wanted to listen, I didn't have time. ~ Joan Armatrading

Who am I to tamper with a masterpiece? ~ Oscar Wilde

The doctrines of grace are not merely a philosophy which gives the best and most logical answers to the profound questions of life. They are that. But more, they stir the inner man to self-abnegation and love for Jehovah. This act of worship before the throne of the Almighty opens a fountain of devotion which must then flow out at every level of decision and action in practical life. Self-denial is a vital link between doctrine and devotion on the one hand, and between devotion and practice on the other. ~ Walter J. Chantry

My notion of a failed writing workshop is when everybody comes out replicating the teacher and imitating as closely as possible the great original at the head of the table. I think that's a mistake, in obvious opposition to the ideal of teaching which permits a student to be someone other than the teacher ... The successful teacher has to make each of the students a different product rather than the same. ~ Nicholas Delbanco

Becoming a writer is a lifelong journey. It cannot be learned in a day or even a month or a year. We will never fully learn all there is to know about our craft, and even if we did we wouldn't realize it. We are filled with self-doubt by nature, and many of us will work our entire lives to master the art of the written word without ever recognizing the true talent we possess. Writing is a personal journey of self-discovery and growth, and should be honored as such. If you wonder about my best writing, I would say it came without warning, in moments when I was most vulnerable - with the door shut and my heart split wide open. ~ Shanda Trofe Write From The Heart

Which is him? The grammar was faulty, maybe, but we could not know, then, that it would go in a book someday. ~ Mark Twain

When I'm writing my album, it's totally my world. Even though it's myself and another producer creating the project, Conceptually it's more under my power and on my own terms. At the same time, it's a different type of pressure because I'm ultimately speaking, I'm solely responsible for the end result. ~ Ashanti

We all are who we are. We're not necessarily good, and we're not necessarily bad. So much television, in the writing, is so one-dimensional, in that aspect, where you have your good guys and you have your bad guys. ~ Kyle Schmid

Writing means not just staring ugliness in the face, but finding a way to embrace
it. ~ Veronica Roth

We write while sleepwalking and revise when awake. ~ Marty Rubin

It is a mean thief or a successful author that plunders the dead. ~ Austin O'Malley

At the time, I was in the middle of writing my novel and could barely find a spare moment to write a paragraph. I used that time to lock myself away and wrote three chapters that weekend. But what stood out the most was listening to Mvula's Father, Father while crafting the scene in which Pam Allen reaches her breaking point and doesn't know if she can handle the possibility of raising another child alone. The song's arrangement was so beautiful and haunting and evoked the right amount of sadness to help me write the emotional scene. ~ G. Barton-Sinkia

There's a rule of writing: if everything is funny, nothing is funny; if everything is sad, nothing is sad. You want that contrast. ~ J. Michael Straczynski

One of the most arrogant undertakings, to my mind, is to write the biography of a man which pretends to go beyond external facts and gives the inmost motives. One of the most mendacious is autobiography. ~ Theodor Haecker

After a while, the characters I'm writing begin to feel real to me. That's when I know I'm heading in the right direction. ~ Alice Hoffman

The stream of Time, irresistible, ever moving, carries off and bears away all things that come to birth and plunges them into utter darkness, both deeds of no account and deeds which are mighty and worthy of commemoration; as the playwright [Sophocles] says, it 'brings to light that which was unseen and shrouds from us that which was manifest.' Nevertheless, the science of History is a great bulwark against this stream of Time; in a way it checks this irresistible flood, it holds in a tight grasp whatever it can seize floating on the surface and will not allow it to slip away into the depths of Oblivion.
... I, having realized the effects wrought by Time, desire now by means of my writings to give an account of my father's deeds, which do not deserve to be consigned to Forgetfulness nor to be swept away on the flood of Time into an ocean of Non-Remembrance; I wish to recall everything ... ~ Anna Comnena

I feel a bigger sense of fulfillment when writing a novel, and short stories are more about instant gratification. ~ Jami Attenberg

I've been writing stories since I was a kid. I love writing stories. ~ Randa Abdel-Fattah

To my mind, it's one of the deepest gratifications the poet or fiction writer knows. I mean, the internal stumbling upon some satisfactory answer to the question, What is this like? Or, What does this remind me of? A comparison is laboriously but successfully introduced. You meet your metaphor, and it's good. ~ Brad Leithauser

Forcing modern speakers of English to not - whoops, not to split an infinitive because it isn't done in Latin makes about as much sense as forcing modern residents of England to wear laurels and togas. ~ Steven Pinker

If they keep exposing you to education, you might even realize some day that man becomes immortal only in what he writes on paper, or hacks into rock, or slabbers onto a canvas, or pulls out of a piano. ~ Robert Ruark

I speak to the paper, as I speak to the first person I meet. ~ Michel De Montaigne

I was a 'learn by doing' writer - I never took any formal writing classes. So it took a long time to figure things out and find my voice. ~ Sara Zarr

Writing ink is the magic that allows nothing to become something. It catches the fleeting idea and seeks out the glances of those who wish to see. Even a random ink splat will mean something to someone. ~ Fennel Hudson