English Writing Quotes:

The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading in order to write. A man will turn over half a library to make a book.

- Samuel Johnson

topic: Time, Powerful, Book, Library Research, Inspiring Writing

No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.

- Ernest Hemingway

source: "The Figure a Poem Makes". Book by Ernest Hemingway, 1939.

topic: Reading, Book, Writing, Story Writers, Story Writing

The only thing better than good English writing is - I can't think of anything. You just don't pour it pureed over your potatoes. You savor it as if it were a find chardonnay. What on Earth does it matter if you stop and repeat a phrase, roll it around on your tongue, dart a few lines ahead and then suddenly come back and reread it? If the phrase is good enough, you are supposed to stop and rejoice in it.

- William Murchison

topic: Reading, Writing, Thinking, Chardonnay, English Writing

English writing tends to fall into two categories - the big, baggy epic novel or the fairly controlled, tidy novel. For a long time, I was a fan of the big, baggy novel, but there's definitely an advantage to having a little bit more control.

- Zadie Smith

topic: Fall, Writing, Epic, English Writing

I mainly wanted non-english writing poets, because I loved the idea that I was translating translations.

- Simone Muench

topic: Writing, Ideas, Poet, English Writing

If you go through any newspaper or magazine and look for active, kicking verbs in the sentences, you will realize that this lack of well used verbs is the main trouble with modern English writing. Almost all nonfiction nowadays is written in a sort of pale, colorless sauce of passives and infinitives, motionless and flat as paper.

- Rudolf Flesch

source: Rudolf Flesch (1946). “The Art of Plain Talk”

topic: Writing, Kicking, Verbs, Modern English, Colorless

All the youth now in England of free men, who are rich enough to be able to devote themselves to it, be set to learn as long as they are not fit for any other occupation, until they are able to read English writing well.

- Alfred the Great

topic: Education, Writing, Men, Writing Well, English Writing

The best models of English writing are Shakespeare and the Old Testament.

- Aleister Crowley

source: "Do What Thou Wilt: A Life of Aleister Crowley". Book by Lawrence Sutin, 2000.

topic: Writing, Old Testament, Models, English Writing