"As far as modern writing is concerned, it is rarely rewarding to translate it, although it might be easy. Translation is very much like copying paintings."

Writing,

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"As far as modern writing is concerned, it is rarely rewarding to translate it, although it might be easy. Translation is very much like copying paintings."

Exlpore more Writing quotes

"A writer out of loneliness is trying to communicate like a distant star sending signals. He isn't telling, or teaching, or ordering. Rather, he seeks to establish a relationship with meaning, of feeling, of observing. We are lonesome animals. We spend all our live trying to be less lonesome. And one of our ancient methods is to tell a story, begging the listener to say, and to feel, "Yes, that's the way it is, or at least that's the way I feel it. You're not as alone as you thought." To finish is sadness to a writer, a little death. He puts the last word down and it is done. But it isn't really done. The story goes on and leaves the writer behind, for no story is ever done."

John Steinbeck, American Author

Writing, Loneliness, Communication, Story

"Every writer has to figure out what works best - and often has to select and discard different tools before they find the one that fits."

Nora Roberts, American Author

Writing, Tools, Writer

"If you can't think of what to write, tough luck; write anyway. If you can think of lots more when you've finished the three pages, don't write it; it'll be that much easier to get going next day."

Philip Pullman, British Writer

Writing, Day, Luck

"Certainly the plagiarism, and dealing with the fallout of it, was the most difficult thing I've ever faced since I started writing."

Nora Roberts, American Author

Writing, Plagiarism

"I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter."

Blaise Pascal, French Philosopher

Writing, Time

"In the summer of '80, Silhouette bought my first book."

Nora Roberts, American Author

Writing, First, Summer

"Everything I've ever done, in the writing world, has been to expand articulation, rather than to close it."

Toni Morrison, American Novelist

Writing, World

"Writers may be disreputable, incorrigible, early to decay or late to bloom but they dare to go it alone."

John Updike, American Novelist

Writing, May, Writers

"I know nothing in the world that has as much power as a word. Sometimes I write one, and I look at it, until it begins to shine."

Emily Dickinson, American Poet

Writing, Word, Power, Expression

"Every author believes, when his first book is published, that those that acclaim it are his personal friends or impersonal peers, while its revilers can only be envious rogues and nonentities."

Vladimir Nabokov, American Novelist

Writing, Ego, Criticism, Success

Explore more quotes by Boris Pasternak

"No bad man can be a good poet."

Man

"I come here to speak poetry. It will always be in the grass. It will also be necessary to bend down to hear it. It will always be too simple to be discussed in assemblies."

Poetry

"I don't like people who have never fallen or stumbled. Their virtue is lifeless and it isn't of much value. Life hasn't revealed its beauty to them."

Life

"As in an explosion, I would erupt with all the wonderful things I saw and understood in this world."

World

"Art has two constant, two unending concerns: It always meditates on death and thus always creates life. All great, genuine art resembles and continues the Revelation of St John."

Life

"They don't ask much of you. They only want you to hate the things you love and to love the things you despise."

Love

"That's metaphysics, my dear fellow. It's forbidden me by my doctor, my stomach won't take it."

Forbidden

"What for centuries raised man above the beast is not the cudgel but the irresistible power of unarmed truth."

Power

"Work is the order of the day, just as it was at one time, with our first starts and our best efforts. Do you remember? Therein lies its delight. It brings back the forgotten; one's stores of energy, seemingly exhausted, come back to life."

Life

"Even so, one step from my grave, I believe that cruelty, spite, The powers of darkness will in time, Be crushed by the spirit of light."

Time