Nathaniel Hawthorne Writing Quotations

No author, without a trial, can conceive of the difficulty of writing a romance about a country where there is no shadow, no antiquity, no mystery, no picturesque and gloomy wrong, nor anything but a commonplace prosperity, in broad and simple daylight, as is happily the case with my dear native land.

Romance and poetry, ivy, lichens and wallflowers need ruin to make them grow.

The greatest possible mint of style is to make the words absolutely disappear into the thought.

When a writer calls his work a Romance, it need hardly be observed that he wishes to claim a certain latitude, both as to its fashion and material, which he would not have felt himself entitled to assume had he professed to be writing a Novel.

If a man, sitting all alone, cannot dream strange things, and make them look like truth, he need never try to write romances.

Writing can come naturally to some. Still, when it comes to good writing, this is true: Easy reading is damn hard writing.

In youth men are apt to write more wisely than they really know or feel; and the remainder of life may be not idly spent in realizing and convincing themselves of the wisdom which they uttered long ago.

The only sensible ends of literature are, first, the pleasurable toil of writing; second, the gratification of one's family and friends; and lastly, the solid cash.

Easy reading is damn hard writing.

Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.