“The last thing one knows when writing a book is what to put first.”
More from Pascal on Writing
“Even those who write against fame wish for the fame of having written well, and those who read their works desire the fame of having read them.”
“Eloquence is painted thought, and thus those who, after having painted it, add somewhat more, make a picture, not a portrait.”
“The last thing one discovers in composing a work is what to put first.”
“I have only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it sho”
Others on Writing
Ernest Hemingway
17 quotes“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”
Virginia Woolf
12 quotes“Literature is strewn with the wreckage of those who have minded beyond reason the opinion of others.”
Somerset Maugham
12 quotes“we do not write as we want but as we can”
Salman Rushdie
11 quotes“I never thought of myself as a writer about religion until a religion came after me.”
Kafka
10 quotes“Writing is prayer.”
Ray Bradbury
9 quotes“Your intuition knows what to write, so get out of the way.”
Flaubert
9 quotes“A good sentence in prose should be like a good line in poetry, unchangeable, as rhythmic, as sonorous.”
Jorge Luis Borges
8 quotes“Every novel is an ideal plane inserted into the realm of reality.”
Harold Bloom
7 quotes“Great writing is always rewriting or revisionism, and is founded on a reading that clears space for the self.”
Flannery O'Connor
7 quotes“Remember that you don't write a story because you have an idea but because you have a believable character.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald
6 quotes“All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.”
Nora Roberts
6 quotes“I can fix a bad page. I can't fix a blank page.”