Bertolt Brecht Writing Quotations

I'm in good form, taking no interest in things, neglecting clothes, meals, company, and feeling calm and stable as I write.

You can't write poems about trees when the woods are full of policemen.

Literary works cannot be taken over like factories, or literary forms of expression like industrial methods. Realist writing, of which history offers many widely varying examples, is likewise conditioned by the question of how, when and for what class it is made use of.

Writers can't write as fast as governments make wars; because to write demands thinking.

Nowadays, anyone who wishes to combat lies and ignorance and to write the truth must overcome at least five difficulties. He must have the courage to write the truth when truth is everywhere opposed; the keenness to recognize it, although it is everywhere concealed; the skill to manipulate it as a weapon; the judgment to select those in whose hands it will be effective; and the running to spread the truth among such persons.