Hilaire Belloc Quotes

To write regular verses destroys an infinite number of fine possibilities, but at the same time it suggests a multitude of distant and totally unexpected thoughts.

I am always pleased to be asked to write a poem.

I can create countries just as I can create the actions of my characters. That is why a lot of travel seems to me a waste of time.

Women who are inclined to write poetry at all are inspired by being mad at something.

Sometimes things just fall out of your head on the paper, and if you're smart, you learn not to touch them.

Part of a writer's job is just spacing out, looking into the air and imagining things.

I was a serious poet for quite a while and had little notebooks filled with poetry.

The exact day I became a poet was April 1, 1965, the day I bought my first typewriter.

You don't have to be a renowned artist like Q-Tip to try your hand at poetry. You don't need any special equipment - that's the beauty of it.

Write what you love and love what you write.

Creative writing teachers should be purged until every last instructor who has uttered the words 'Write what you know' is confined to a labor camp. Please, talented scribblers, write what you don't. The blind guy with the funny little harp who composed The Iliad, how much combat do you think he saw?

Writing doesn't mean necessarily putting words on a sheet of paper. You can write a chapter while walking or eating.

I really think that if there's any one enemy to human creativity, especially creative writing, it's self-consciousness.

The only good writing is intuitive writing. It would be a big bore if you knew where it was going. It has to be exciting, instantaneous and it has to be a surprise. Then it all comes blurting out and it’s beautiful. I’ve had a sign by my typewriter for 25 years now which reads, ‘DON’T THINK!’

When you write, don't say, "I'm going to write a poem." That attitude will freeze you right away. Sit down with the least expectation of yourself; say, "I am free to write the worst junk in the world."

The difficulty in the way of writing a children's play is that Barrie was born too soon. Many people must have felt the same about Shakespeare. We who came later have no chance. What fun to have been Adam, and to have had the whole world of plots and jokes and stories at one's disposal.

I start writing, pull whatever images happen to occur to me and make up a story, instead of starting with details that are real and I know of and going from there.

I never know when I sit down, just what I am going to write. I make no plan; it just comes, and I don't know where it comes from.

I always wanted to write poetry, even when I was very young.

A word only writes its night and rides its dream.

Go where the pleasure is in your writing. Go where the pain is. Write the book you would like to read. Write the book you have been trying to find but have not found. But write. And remember, there are no rules for our profession. Ignore rules. Ignore what I say here if it doesn't help you. Do it your own way. Every writer knows fear and discouragement. Just write.The world is crying for new writing. It is crying for fresh and original voices and new characters and new stories. If you won't write the classics of tomorrow, well, we will not have any.

I feel that anything is possible in a poem.

You write down a paragraph or two describing several different subjects creating a kind of story ingredients-list, I suppose, and then cut the sentences into four or five-word sections; mix em up and reconnect them. You can get some pretty interesting idea combinations like this. You can use them as is or, if you have a craven need to not lose control, bounce off these ideas and write whole new sections.

She [Carol Parsinan] somehow read my poems and came back to me and convinced me that I could be a poet, that I had the passion and the enthusiasm and the creativity to become a poet, but that what I was writing was not poetry because I was just expressing my feelings and I wasn't try to make anything.

I am writing to a rhythm and not to a plot.