Quotations

Remarks poets made beyond their poems — letters, journals, conversation — gathered as a readable library. Browse by topic or author, or search the words themselves. Currently 7,220 active remarks.

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Topic: Writing

Showing 24 of 492 · page 5 of 21

“What I wrote was intended at least for one other eye—my childhood’s companion and friend.”

A glimpse of writing as an intimate act of communication rather than merely a public one. · Introduction to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

“The blank incapability of invention is the greatest misery of authorship, when dull Nothing replies to our anxious invocations.”

Capturing the particular frustration of creative work when inspiration refuses to arrive. · Introduction to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

“I could scarcely accuse myself of a personal intrusion.”

Her wry justification for writing personally about the origins of her most famous work. · Introduction to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

“I am very averse to bringing myself forward in print.”

A modest glimpse of her reluctance to place herself personally before the reading public. · Introduction to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

“Invention consists in the capacity of seizing on the capabilities of a subject, and in the power of moulding and fashioning ideas suggested to it.”

Presenting invention as the imaginative transformation of possibilities already present. · Introduction to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

“Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos.”

A striking account of creativity as the shaping of existing materials rather than creation from nothing. · Introduction to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

“As a child I scribbled; and my favourite pastime, during the hours given me for recreation, was to write stories.”

A revealing recollection of how naturally writing entered her childhood life. · Introduction to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

“My dreams were at once more fantastic and agreeable than my writings.”

A candid reflection on the freedom and richness of imagination before it is shaped into literature. · Introduction to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

“It is a law of his being, and as such constitutes yet another handicap.”

Describing the inner compulsion to write as both gift and burden. · Speech, The Handicaps of Letters, 1908

Rudyard Kipling

“Sometimes they find it difficult to feed one.”

A stark reminder of the economic insecurity that can accompany literary work. · Speech, The Handicaps of Letters, 1908

Rudyard Kipling

“In other callings of life there exists a convention that what a man has made shall be his own and his children’s after him.”

Contrasting literary property with ordinary assumptions about ownership. · Speech, The Handicaps of Letters, 1908

Rudyard Kipling

“The calling of letters carries with it disabilities from which these professions are free.”

Drawing attention to the particular difficulties faced by writers. · Speech, The Handicaps of Letters, 1908

Rudyard Kipling

“My business being to write, I wrote about them and their lives. I did not realise then what I realised later.”

A concise account of how observation became literary subject matter. · Speech, The Spirit of the Navy, 1908

Rudyard Kipling

“Much of this suffering is inevitable, but some of it the Fund, by your good help, can reach and alleviate as few other institutions can.”

Turning literary idealism towards practical compassion for struggling writers. · Speech, The Handicaps of Letters, 1908

Rudyard Kipling

“Men perpetually measured against the great works of the past must always enjoy the privilege accorded to minorities. They must suffer.”

Describing the burden imposed by comparison with literary predecessors. · Speech, The Handicaps of Letters, 1908

Rudyard Kipling

“We hope that some will so survive.”

A simple expression of the writer's hope for literary survival. · Speech, The Handicaps of Letters, 1908

Rudyard Kipling

“It occurs to me that the reputation to which your Chairman alludes was achieved not by doing anything in particular, but by writing stories about things which other men have done.”

A modest account of his literary reputation as a storyteller about other people's actions. · Speech, The Spirit of the Navy, 1908

Rudyard Kipling

“The reward is not to the man himself. You have done him a great, a very great honour, one which I make bold to hope is not so much to the author whose name I bear as to the ideas that I have been fortunate enough to reflect.”

Deflecting personal praise towards the ideas he believed his writing represented. · Speech, Imperial Relations, 1907

Rudyard Kipling

“It is one thing to write and quite another thing to read.”

Drawing a simple but important distinction between creating and receiving literature. · Speech, The Uses of Reading, 1912

Rudyard Kipling

“When it has done this it is literature of which it will be said, in due time, that it fitly represents its age.”

Defining enduring literature partly by its ability to represent its historical moment. · Speech, Literature, 1906

Rudyard Kipling

“That record must satisfy at all costs to the word and to the man behind the word.”

Putting the integrity of the literary record above personal comfort. · Speech, Literature, 1906

Rudyard Kipling

“There is no room, and the world insists that there shall be no room, for pity, for mercy, for respect, for fear, or even for loyalty between man and his fellow-man, when the record of the Tribe comes to be written.”

Arguing for ruthless honesty when literature records an age. · Speech, Literature, 1906

Rudyard Kipling

“The magic of every word shall be tried out to the uttermost by every means, fair or foul, that the mind of man can suggest.”

Expressing an uncompromising view of the writer's responsibility to language. · Speech, Literature, 1906

Rudyard Kipling

“The man with the Words shall wait upon the man of achievement, and step by step with him try to tell the story to the tribe.”

Describing the writer's role as interpreter and recorder of human action. · Speech, Literature, 1906

Rudyard Kipling