Georg C. Lichtenberg Writing Quotations

Nowadays three witty turns of phrase and a lie make a writer.

A man always writes absolutely well whenever he writes in his own manner, but the wigmaker who tries to write like Gellert ... writes badly.

The writer who cannot sometimes throw away a thought about which another man would have written dissertations, without worry whether or not the reader will find it, will never become a great writer.

When a book and a head collide and a hollow sound is heard, must it always have come from the book?

Many intelligent people, when about to write . . . , force on their minds a certain notion about style, just as they screw up their faces when they sit for their portraits.

What concerns me alone I only think, what concerns my friends I tell them, what can be of interest to only a limited public I write, and what the world ought to know is printed...

To write brashly about some things, it is almost necessary not to know much about them.

There is something in our minds like sunshine and the weather, which is not under our control. When I write, the best things come to me from I know not where.

Bad writers are those who try to express their own feeble ideas in the language of good ones.

If it is permissible to write plays that are not intended to be seen, I should like to see who can prevent me from writing a book no one can read.

Everyone who has ever written will have discovered that writing always awakens something which, though it lay within us, we failed clearly to recognize before.