Pen Quotes

“Anyone who thinks the pen is mightier than the sword has not been stabbed with both.”
― Lemony Snicket, When Did You See Her Last?

“the intensity
in your eyes

burns my pen
as i write.”
― Sanober Khan, A touch, a tear, a tempest

“then things got even stranger.
Mr. Brunner, who'd been out in front of the museum a minute before, wheeled his chair into the doorway of the gallery, holding a pen in his hand.
"What ho, Percy!" he shouted, and tossed the pen through the air.
Mrs. Dodds lunged at me.
With a yelp, I dodged and felt talons slash the air next to my ear. I snatched the ballpoint pen out of the air, but when it hit my hand, it wasn't a pen anymore. It was a sword-Mr. Brunner's bronze sword, which he always used on tourement day.
Mrs. Dodds spun toward me with a murderous look in her eyes.
My knees were jelly. My hands were shaking so bad I almost dropped the sword.
She snarled, "Die, honey!"
And she flew straight at me.
Absolute terror ran through my body. I did the only thing that came naturally:I swung the sword.
The metal blade hit her shoulder and passed through her body as if she were made made of water. Hisss!
Mrs. Dodds was a sand castle in a power fan. She exploded into yellow powder, vaporized on the spot, leaving nothing but the smell of sulfur and a dying screech and a chill of evil in the air, as if those two glowing red eyes were still watching me.”
― Rick Riordan

“I mostly want to remind her of the recipes of healing, and give her my own made-on-the spot remedy for the easing of her pain. I tell her, “Get a pen. Stop crying so you can write this down and start working on it tonight.” My remedy is long. But the last item on the list says: “When you wake up and find yourself living someplace where there is nobody you love and trust, no community, it is time to leave town – to pack up and go (you can even go tonight). And where you need to go is any place where there are arms that can hold you, that will not let you go.”
― bell hooks, Sisters of the Yam: Black Women and Self-Recovery

“You want to be a writer, don't know how or when? Find a quiet place, use a humble pen.”
― Paul Simon

“Silence is death, and you, if you talk, you die, and if you remain silent, you die. So, speak out and die.”
― Tahar Djaout

“I am obnoxious to each carping tongue/ Who says my hand a needle better fits./ A poet's pen all scorn I should thus wrong/ For such despite they cast on female wits;/ If what I do prove well, it won't advance,/ They'll say it's stolen, or else, it was by chance.”
― Anne Bradstreet

“Muses are fickle, and many a writer, peering into the voice, has escaped paralysis by ascribing the creative responsibility to a talisman: a lucky charm, a brand of paper, but most often a writing instrument. Am I writing well? Thank my pen. Am I writing badly? Don't blame me blame my pen. By such displacements does the fearful imagination defend itself.”
― Anne Fadiman, Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader

“She looked at her hand: Just some hand, holding a cheap pen. Some girls’ hand. She had nothing to do with that hand. Let that hand do whatever it wanted to.”
― Cynthia Voigt, When She Hollers

“I used to always read with a pen in my hand, as if the author and I were in a conversation.”
― Tara Bray Smith

“Pen-bereavement is a serious matter.”
― Anne Fadiman, Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader

“When the ink runs dry, you're most likely writing at the wrong angle.”
― Carolyn Shields

“Here I am once again
Holding my pen while it’s going all dry
With no stories there to write
Nor remarkable dates for me to scratch
And it scares the hell out of me the way my soul became so numb
That all my papers turn into blanks…”
― Samiha Totanji

“And speaking of this wonderful machine:
[840] I’m puzzled by the difference between
Two methods of composing:A,the kind Which goes on solely in the poet’s mind,
A testing of performing words, while he
Is soaping a third time one leg, andB,
The other kind, much more decorous, when
He’s in his study writing with a pen. In method B the hand supports the thought,
The abstract battle is concretely fought.
The pen stops in mid-air, then swoops to bar
[850] A canceled sunset or restore a star,
And thus it physically guides the phrase
Toward faint daylight through the inky maze.
But methodAis agony! The brain
Is soon enclosed in a steel cap of pain.
A muse in overalls directs the drill Which grinds and which no effort of the will
Can interrupt, while the automaton
Is taking off what he has just put on Or walking briskly to the corner store [860] To buy the paper he has read before.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire

“When people starts to enjoy a writer's pen, he becomes a legend even if his stories are neither long nor publicly surrounded by expectations.”
― A. Saleh

“Write down your pain with a pen on a piece of blank paper then think of the words that need improvement, you find yourself most responsible for most of your pain.”
― Srinivas Mishra

“What you can win with a pen; you cannot win that with a weapon because love and peace hold a pen; hatred and violence take a gun.”
― Ehsan Sehgal

“Qui plume a, guerre a. Ce monde est un vaste temple dédié à la discorde.”
― Voltaire

“I can take pen in hand and tally the sum total of my achievements. But unless they are of God, the pen will be dry and page will be blank.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“Had I been handed the pen in the telling of the tale, the story would have ended with a sealed tomb. And I would have written it in such a manner because I desperately lack both the bravery to risk believing in greater things, and the vision to see beyond lesser things. And so, thank God that He never handed me the pen. But far more profoundly, thank God that He allowed me to read the tale so that I can actually live the tale.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“If we are to write the script of our lives with wisdom we must put down the pen, set the paper aside and ask not ‘what do I want to do,’ but ‘what should I do?’ For the latter is a script penned in prose littered with tragedy, and the former is a script penned with lines rich with triumph.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“My pen lies idle, its ink long since dried up, leaving me with nothing but blank pages and a hollow sense of emptiness.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“Tickle my heart with your pen.
Write me for all to read.
Bind our love inside a book,
make me your poetry.”
― N'Zuri Za Austin

“The pen ploughs deeper than a tractor and soars higher than a rocket”
― DJ Bwakali

“All those memories....and a poem fell off my pen, a river broke loose somewhere and now they run stories through my soul..”
― Jayita Bhattacharjee

“Ik klom vanuit Seuna omhoog naar de hoofdweg. Tijdens dat soort wandelingen schrijf ik altijd. Schrijven zoals ik het bedoel. Ik strijk mijn geest glad als een leeg vel papier waarop allerlei gedachten en beelden zich omzetten in tekens en maten. Een stem die altijd met me meegaat leest ze aan me voor: ze is streng, ze neemt geen genoegen met goedkope oplossingen. Ze herhaalt voor me wat ik al heb geschreven en ze praat me na, gekscherend, wanneer ik niet de juiste woorden vind, wanneer een geur, een smaak, een plant, een ochtendhemel, zich niet wil omzetten in beeldenmuziek. Sommigen zouden wellicht zeggen dat het mijn innerlijke stem is. Ik zeg alleen dat ze er is, en dat ze misschien wel de enige persoon is die me nooit in de steek heeft gelaten.
De vloek van dichters: ze houden nooit op met schrijven. En het laatste wat ze nodig hebben is wel pen en papier…”
― Marcello Fois

“Writer's Block

I sit down peacefully with my book.
Upon the blank page I look.
As i tap my pen patiently, patiently,
Patiently waiting in my writing nook.”
― Edward James

“A Writer is powerful and never alone! Her companion is her Pen and the blank piece of paper- her World; where she chooses to write her Life, her Way!”
― Somya Kedia

“Don't be afraid to rewrite your story; you hold the pen.”
― Carlos Wallace, Why Sell Lies When The Truth Is Free

“After all when writing your story, only you should yield your pen, no one else! Don't let any one else but yourself control your own narrative!”
― Ryan Gelpke, Peruvian Nights