Ten Favorite Quotes About Writing

By Ray E. Boomhower

John Bartlow Martin wrote 17 books; his early journalism won many awards.

“I can write better than anybody who can write faster, and I can write faster than anybody who can write better.”
—A.J. Liebling

“Good editing has saved bad writing more often than bad editing has harmed good writing. This is because a bad editor will not keep his job for long, but a bad writer can, and will, go on forever.”
—Gardner Botsford

“Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.”
—George Orwell

“The writer’s object should be to hold the reader’s attention. I want the reader to turn the page and keep on turning until the end. This is accomplished only when the narrative moves steadily ahead, not when it comes to a weary standstill, overloaded with every item uncovered in the research.”
—Barbara W. Tuchman

“The basic idea of writing is to communicate. If a man has nothing to say, he has no business writing. This is just as true in non-fiction as fiction.”
—John Bartlow Martin

“Writing, I think, is not apart from living. Writing is a kind of double living. The writer experiences everything twice. Once in reality and once in that mirror which waits always before or behind.”
—Catherine Drinker Bowen

“Editing should be, especially in the case of old writers, a counseling rather than a collaborating task. The tendency of the writer-editor to collaborate is natural, but he should say to himself, ‘How can I help this writer to say it better in his own style?’ and avoid ‘How can I show him how I would write it, if it were my piece?’”’
—James Thurber

“Write one good clean sentence and put a period at the end of it. Then write another one.”
—M.F.K. Fisher

“Editing on a manuscript should be done with a black pencil, decisively.”
—Wolcott Gibbs

“Read, read, read. Read everything—trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it.

Then write. If it’s good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out of the window.”
—William Faulkner
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Ray E. Boomhower is senior editor at the Indiana Historical Society Press, where he edits the quarterly popular history magazine Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History. He has also written biographies on such notable Hoosiers as Gus Grissom, Ernie Pyle, Lew Wallace, and May Wright Sewall. Boomhower’s book John Bartlow Martin: A Voice for the Underdog was recently published by Indiana University Press. He is now working on a book about the World War II writing from the Pacific by Time and Life journalist Robert Sherrod.