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C. S. Lewis Quotes about Writing

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First, I do not sit down at my desk to put into verse something that is already clear in my mind. If it were clear in my mind, I should have no incentive or need to write about it. We do not write in order to be

First, I do not sit down at my desk to put into verse something that is already clear in my mind. If it were clear in my mind, I should have no incentive or need to write about it. We do not write in order to be understood; we write in order to understand.

Writing, Order, Should Have

Whenever you are fed up with life, start writing: ink is the great cure for all human ills, as I have found out long ago.

Writing, Long Ago, Ink

What you want is practice, practice, practice. It doesn’t matter what we write (at least this is my view) at our age, so long as we write continually as well as we can. I feel that every time I write a page either of prose or of verse, with real effort, even if it’s thrown into the fire the next minute, I am so much further on.

Real, Writing, Fire

Anyone who is honestly trying to be a Christian will soon find his intelligence being sharpened: one of the reasons why it needs no special education to be a Christian is that Christianity is an education itself. That is why an uneducated believer like Bunyan was able to write a book that has astonished the whole world.

Christian, Book, Writing

C. S. Lewis (2012). “The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics”, p.74, HarperCollins UK

The world does not need more Christian literature. What it needs is more Christians writing good literature.

Christian, Writing, Doe

I never exactly made a book. It's rather like taking dictation. I was given things to say.

Book, Writing, Made

Write about what really interests you, whether it is real things or imaginary things, and nothing else.

Real, Writing, Interest

Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say 'infinitely' when you mean 'very'; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.

Communication, Writing, Mean

Don't say it was "delightful"; make us say "delightful" when we've read the description.

Writing, Description, Delightful

Never use abstract nouns when concrete ones will do. If you mean “More people died” don’t say “Mortality rose.

Writing, Mean, People

I was with book, as a woman is with child.

Children, Book, Writing

I write for the unlearned about things in which I am unlearned myself.

Writing

C. S. Lewis (1964). “Reflections on the Psalms”, p.9, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

You can make anything by writing.

Writing, Kids, Storytelling

When you give up a bit of work don't (unless it is hopelessly bad) throw it away. Put it in a drawer. It may come in useful later. Much of my best work, or what I think my best, is the re-writing of things begun and abandoned years earlier.

Giving Up, Writing, Thinking

If only this toothache would go away, I could write another chapter on the problem of pain.

Pain, Writing, Interesting

Even when I feared and detested Christianity, I was struck by its essential unity, which, in spite of its divisions, it has never lost. I trembled on recognizing the same unmistakable aroma coming from the writings of Dante and Bunyan, Thomas Aquinas and William Law.

Writing, Law, Unity

What began the change was the very writing itself. Let no one lightly set about such a work. Memory, once waked, will play the tyrant.

Memories, Writing, Play

C. S. Lewis (1980). “Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold”, p.259, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

The change which the writing wrought in me (and of which I did not write) was only a beginning; only to prepare me for the gods' surgery. They used my own pen to probe my wound.

Writing, Used, Surgery

I thought I could describe a state; make a map of sorrow. Sorrow, however, turns out to be not a state, but a process. It needs not a map, but a history, and if I don't stop writing that history at some quite arbitrary point, there's no reason why I should ever stop.

Grief, Writing, Suffering

C.S. Lewis (2012). “A Grief Observed”, p.29, Faber & Faber

Don't say it was delightful; make us say delightful when we've read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers Please will you do the job for me.

Jobs, Writing, Wonderful

Writing is like a 'lust,' or like 'scratching when you itch.' Writing comes as a result of a very strong impulse, and when it does come, I for one must get it out.

Strong, Writing, Lust

Source: www.teachingbooks.net

The story itself should force its moral upon you. You find out what the moral is by writing the story.

Writing, Stories, Moral

We can never know that a piece of writing is bad unless we have begun by trying to read it as if it was very good and ended by discovering that we were paying the author an undeserved compliment.

Writing, Trying, Pieces

C. S. Lewis (2012). “An Experiment in Criticism”, p.32, Cambridge University Press

Of course all children's literature is not fantastic, so all fantastic books need not be children's books. It is still possible, even in an age so ferociously anti-romantic as our own, to write fantastic stories for adults: though you will usually need to have made a name in some more fashionable kind of literature before anyone will publish them.

Children, Book, Writing

C. S. Lewis (2002). “On Stories: And Other Essays on Literature”, p.58, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

God lends us a little of His reasoning powers and that is how we think: He puts a little of His love into us and that is how we love one another. When you teach a child writing, you hold its hand while it forms the letters: that is, it forms the letters because you are forming them. We love and reason because God loves and reasons and holds our hand while we do it.

Children, Writing, Thinking

C. S. Lewis (2012). “The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics”, p.60, HarperCollins UK

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