There are few activities, other than writing, that improve thinking.
.
It can be as simple
as writing a journal.
.
To write is to improve thinking.
.
Here is what writers have discovered.
“Writing is thinking on paper.”
William Zinsser
American writer, editor
and teacher
“I don’t know what I think
until I write it down.”
Joan Didion
American Journalist and Novelist,
(b.1934)
“I write
because I don’t know what I think
until I read what I say.”
Flannery O’Connor
American writer and essayist
wrote two novels and 32 short stories
(1925-1964)
“Writing and learning and thinking
are the same process”
William Zinsser
American writer,
editor and teacher
“The act of putting pen to paper
encourages pause for thought,
this in turn makes us
think more deeply about life,
which helps us regain our equilibrium.”
Norbet Platt
“You never know what you will learn
till you start writing.
Then you discover truths
that you never knew existed"
Anita Brookner
English novelist and art historian
(b.1928)
“I must write it all out, at any cost.
Writing is thinking.
It is more than living,
for it is being conscious of living.”
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
American writer and aviation pioneer
Wife of Charles Lindbergh first transatlantic solo flight
(1906-2001)
“Writing is making sense of life.
You work your whole life
and perhaps you've made sense
of one small area.”
Nadine Gordimer
South African novelist and short-story writer,
1991 Nobel Prize for Literature,
(b.1923)
“I write entirely
to find out what I'm thinking,
what I'm looking at,
what I see
and what it means.
What I want and what I fear.”
Joan Didion
American Journalist and Novelist,
(b.1934)
“Don't get it right, just get it written”
James Thurber
American Writer
(1894-1961)
“If you would not be forgotten
as soon as you are dead and rotten,
either write something worth reading
or do something worth writing.”
Benjamin Franklin
American Statesman, Scientist,
Philosopher, Printer, Writer and Inventor.
(1706-1790)
“I write to discover what I think.
After all, the bars aren't open that early.”
Daniel J. Boorstin
American historian, professor,
attorney, and writer,
twelfth Librarian of the United States Congress.
(1914 – 2004)
“If there's a book
you really want to read
but it hasn't been written yet,
then you must write it”
Toni Morrison
American Writer, Teacher and Editor.
Won the Pulitzer Prize for Beloved;
won Nobel Prize for Literature, 1993,
( b.1931)
“Talent is helpful in writing,
but guts are absolutely necessary.”
Jessamyn West
American Writer,
(1902-1984)
“The pen is the tongue of the mind.”
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
Spanish writer, author of the masterwork 'El quijote',
(1547-1616)
“Write what should not be forgotten”
Isabel Allende
Chilean writer
(b.1942)
“To write simply
is as difficult as to be good”
William Somerset Maugham
English short-story Writer, Novelist and Playwright
(1874-1965)
“If the truth is there,
bad writing won't hurt it!”
Alfred Adler
Austrian psychiatrist
whose influential system of individual psychology
introduced the term inferiority feeling,
later widely and often inaccurately called inferiority complex,
(1870-1937)
“Only the hand that erases
can write the true thing.”
Meister Eckhart
German Writer and Theologian.
(1260-1328)
Comment: All writers are re-writers.
Ted Agon
“You don't write
because you want to say something,
you write because
you have something to say.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald
American Writer.
Author of The Great Gatsby
(1896-1940)
“When you write down your ideas
you automatically focus
your full attention on them.
. Few if any of us can write one thought
and think another at the same time.
Thus a pencil and paper
make excellent concentration tools.”
Michael Leboeuf
“Writing and rewriting
are a constant search
for what it is one is saying”
John Updike
American writer
(1932 - 2009)
“The difficulty of literature
is not to write,
but to write what you mean;
not to affect your reader,
but to affect him precisely as you wish.”
Robert Louis Stevenson
Scottish Essayist, Poet
Author of fiction and travel books
(1850-1894)
“Writing is the only profession
where no one considers you ridiculous
if you earn no money.”
Jules Renard
French Writer
(1864-1910)
“You must often make erasures
if you mean to write what
is worthy of being read a second time;
and don't labor
for the admiration of the crowd,
but be content with a few choice readers.”
Horace
Ancient Roman Poet
(65 BC-8 BC)