Robert Louis Stevenson Quotes about Writing

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It takes hard writing to make easy reading.

It takes hard writing to make easy reading.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Reading, Writing, Easy

The difficulty is not to write, but to write what you mean.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Writing, Mean, Literature

Do not write merely to be understood. Write so you cannot possibly be misunderstood.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Writing, Misunderstood, Understood

When I say writing, O believe me, it is rewriting that I have chiefly in mind.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Believe, Writing, Mind

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

Book, Writing, Mean

Robert Louis Stevenson (2014). “Memories, Portraits, Essays and Records (Annotated Edition)”, p.592, Jazzybee Verlag

No human being ever spoke of scenery for above two minutes at a time, which makes me suspect that we hear too much of it in literature.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Writing, Two, Literature

Memories and Portraits ch. 10 (1887)

When I suffer in mind, stories are my refuge; I take them like opium; and consider one who writes them as a sort of doctor of the mind.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Writing, Doctors, Mind

Robert Louis Stevenson (2014). “The Collected Letters (Annotated Edition)”, p.355, Jazzybee Verlag

The most influential books, and the truest in their influence, are works of fiction. They repeat, they re-arrange, they clarify the lessons of life; they disengage us from ourselves, they constrain us to the acquaintance of others; and they show us the web of experience, but with a singular change-that monstrous, consuming ego of ours being, nonce, struck out.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Life Lesson, Book, Writing

Robert Louis Stevenson (2016). “Essays in the Art of Writing(illustrated)”, p.25, Full Moon Publications

I hate to write, but I love to have written.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Hate, Writing, I Hate

The seeming significance of nature's appearances, their unchanging strangeness to the senses, and the thrilling response which they awaken in the mind of man . . . If we could only write near enough to the facts, and yet with no pedestrian calm, but ardently, we might transfer the glamour of reality direct upon our pages.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Nature, Writing, Reality

If you are going to make a book end badly, it must end badly from the beginning.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Book, Writing, Ends

Robert Louis Stevenson (2015). “The Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson: Novels, Short Stories, Poems, Plays, Memoirs, Travel Sketches, Letters and Essays (Illustrated Edition): The Entire Opus of Scottish novelist, poet, essayist and travel writer, containing Treasure Island, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Kidnapped, Catriona and A Child's Garden of Verses”, p.2210, e-artnow

Every book is, in an intimate sense, a circular-letter to the friends of him who writes it.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Book, Writing, Letters

Robert Louis Stevenson (2015). “Collected Memoirs, Travel Sketches and Island Literature of Robert Louis Stevenson: Autobiographical Writings and Essays by the prolific Scottish novelist, poet and travel writer, author of Treasure Island, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Kidnapped & Catriona”, p.88, e-artnow

All I dreamed about Dr. Jekyll was that one man was being pressed into a cabinet, when he swallowed a drug and changed into another being. I awoke and said at once that I had found the missing link for which I had been looking so long, and before I went again to sleep almost every detail of the story, as it stands, was clear to me. Of course, writing it was another thing.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Writing, Sleep, Men

Robert Louis Stevenson (1993). “The complete short stories”

I would rather do a good hours work weeding than write two pages of my best; nothing is so interesting as weeding. I went crazy over the outdoor work, and at last had to confine myself to the house, or literature must have gone by the board.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Weed, Crazy, Writing

Robert Louis Stevenson Quotes about Writing

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