Ralph E. Flanders Quotes

Writing is thinking in slow motion.

If you want to understand what you're thinking, you kind of have to work it through and write it. And the only way to work it through, for me, is to write it.

I write to discover what I think.

There is nothing like writing to force you to think and get your thoughts straight.

For me writing is foremost a mode of thinking and when it works well, an act of discovery

Which is why I am writing this book. To think. To understand. It just happens to be the way I'm made. I have to write things down to feel I fully comprehend them.

Most thinkers write badly, because they communicate not only their thoughts, but also the thinking of them.

I am fully intelligent only when I write. I have a certain amount of small-change intelligence, which I carry round with me as, at any rate in a town, one has to carry small money, for the needs of the day, the non-writing day. But it seems to me I seldom purely think ... if I thought more I might write less.

A lot of writing is thinking.

You have to attempt to be objective about yourself.

I try not to be overly analytical.

Writing is thought crystalized on a piece of paper, which can then be reviewed.

Unprovided with original learning, unformed in the habits of thinking, unskilled in the arts of composition, I resolved to write a book.

Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.

I write to discover what I think. After all, the bars aren't open that early.

I kind of do all of this writing as a way of thinking and learning. I'm sure it's similar to being a journalist: You get to learn, and that's the greatest kind of job.

I am never as clear about any matter as when I have finished writing about it.

I always try and find new things to think about and address. That really opens you up as a writer. I can write a lot of what I feel and it helps put it into clearer perspective.

Writing is always a way, for me, of coming to some sort of understanding that I can't reach otherwise.It forces you to think. It forces you to work the thing through. Nothing comes to us out of the blue, very easily.

I'm one of those people who doesn't really know what he thinks until he writes it down.

Without a pen in my hand I can't think.

Nothing so sharpens the thought process as writing down one's arguments. Weaknesses overlooked in oral discussion become painfully obvious on the written page.

An essential part of seeing clearly is finding the willingness to look closely and to go beyond our own ideas.

Writing keeps me from believing everything I read.

Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That's why it's so hard.