“We do not write as we want but as we can.”
More from Somerset Maugham on Writing
“The only important thing in a book is the meaning that it has for you.”
“There are three secrets to writing a novel. Unfortunately nobody knows what they are.”
“There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.”
“I write only when inspiration strikes. Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o'clock sharp.”
“If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn't matter a damn how you write.”
“Writing is the supreme solace.”
“To write simply is as difficult as to be good.”
“The writer is more concerned to know than to judge.”
“You cannot write unless you write much.”
“we do not write as we want but as we can”
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.”
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.”
Flaubert
9 quotes“A good sentence in prose should be like a good line in poetry, unchangeable, as rhythmic, as sonorous.”
Ray Bradbury
9 quotes“Your intuition knows what to write, so get out of the way.”
Jorge Luis Borges
8 quotes“Every novel is an ideal plane inserted into the realm of reality.”
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.”
Harold Bloom
7 quotes“Great writing is always rewriting or revisionism, and is founded on a reading that clears space for the self.”
Ezra Pound
6 quotes“This is no book. Whoever touches this touches a man.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald
6 quotes“All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.”
Madeleine L'Engle
6 quotes“A book comes and says, 'Write me.”