326 Quotes About Writing-philosophy
"Our expectations and experience shapes us. When we write we must find a voice that expresses our sentient self, not some idealized version of a cogent self, devoid of the exacting life-altering lessons that come with enduring a variety of experiences."
"A personal essay is probably the most malleable form of writing style, because it enables a writer to engage in a felicitous conversation with oneself. The more formal rules that govern academic writing are largely inapplicable to personal essay writing. Personal essays are free from the forbidding cadence and rigid structure of thesis writing. A personal essay’s lilt reflects the movement of the writer’s mind."
"An essayist’s tone can be grim or playful, somber or teasing, and critical or uplifting. Unlike a thesis that a writer drafts to establish, verify, and support a proposition, a person primarily writes a personal essay to please oneself by questioning, probing, and investigating the mysterious, anomalous, and the unknowable wreckage of our humanity. A writer frequently initiates a personal essay by simply clearing their throat."
"No paper is ever finished to an author’s satisfaction. External circumstances and internal limitations conspire to terminate the work. The writer stops pounding out text and ceases tinkering with words when one comes to a point of diminishing returns and/or an urgent need to move forward forces an abandonment of the work."
"Commencing and concluding any writing project entails making certain compromises. A person must put off attending to other projects in order to devote him or herself to taking on an extensive writing project. The allocation of a writer’s limited resources of time requires choosing how much time to devote to any manuscript. One must stop working on a manuscript before it meets all the writer’s hopeful expectations."
"A writer always questions their primary motive to commence placing thoughts and recollections onto paper because many factors urge the writer to begin and an equal number rivaling factors implore them to quit."
"Art consist of a writer or painter’s psychosis extirpated on the canvas of his choosing, a truism whether one is inspecting a Vincent Van Gogh masterpiece or deciphering the incomprehensible utterings and dissociated ramblings of one of the Philistines framed in the picaresque novel ‘Confederacy of Dunces, written by American novelist John Kennedy Toole (1937-1969)."
"A person must discern a sustainable philosophy for living, and his or her purposeful intent must be in harmony with their inner spirit as well as the spirit of the universe."
"Writing is one method to discover ideas that a person previously never consciously considered."