Mobsea Logo
Home

Motivational Quotes

Writers and writing

There are hardly half a dozen writers in England today who have not sold out to the enemy. Even when their good work has been a success, Mammon grips them and whispers: More money for more work.
- Crowley, Aleister
Writers and writing Motivational Quotes



Best Quotes about Writers and writing

1.
Great writers arrive among us like new diseases -- threatening, powerful, impatient for patients to pick up their virus, irresistible.
Raine, Craig

2.
If I had more time I would write a shorter letter.
Pascal, Blaise

3.
I think it's bad to talk about one's present work, for it spoils something at the root of the creative act. It discharges the tension.
Mailer, Norman

4.
Writing a novel without being asked seems a bit like having a baby when you have nowhere to live.
Ellman, Lucy

5.
If written directions alone would suffice, libraries wouldn't need to have the rest of the universities attached.
Martin, Judith

6.
A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.
Woolf, Virginia

7.
I would love to spend all my time writing to you; I'd love to share with you all that goes through my mind, all that weighs on my heart, all that gives air to my soul; phantoms of art, dreams that would be so beautiful if they could come true.
Pirandello, Luigi

8.
The more books we read, the clearer it becomes that the true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece and that no other task is of any consequence.
Connolly, Cyril

9.
Every secret of a writer's soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written large in his works.
Woolf, Virginia

10.
There are hardly half a dozen writers in England today who have not sold out to the enemy. Even when their good work has been a success, Mammon grips them and whispers: More money for more work.
Crowley, Aleister

11.
My idea is always to reach my generation. The wise writer writes for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmasters of ever afterward.

12.
The best emotions to write out of are anger and fear or dread. The least energizing emotion to write out of is admiration. It is very difficult to write out of because the basic feeling that goes with admiration is a passive contemplative mood.
Sontag, Susan

13.
Many writers who choose to be active in the world lose not virtue but time, and that stillness without which literature cannot be made.
Vidal, Gore

14.
Any writer, I suppose, feels that the world into which he was born is nothing less than a conspiracy against the cultivation of his talent.
Baldwin, James

15.
If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don't listen to writers talking about writing or themselves.
Hellman, Lillian

16.
Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings so that you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for.
Socrates

17.
The trouble began with Forster. After him it was considered ungentlemanly to write more than five or six novels.
Burgess, Anthony

18.
You expect far too much of a first sentence. Think of it as analogous to a good country breakfast: what we want is something simple, but nourishing to the imagination. Hold the philosophy, hold the adjectives, just give us a plain subject and verb and perhaps a wholesome, nonfattening adverb or two.
Mcmurtry, Larry

19.
Writing is like getting married. One should never commit oneself until one is amazed at one's luck.
Murdoch, Iris

20.
I was in a queer mood, thinking myself very old: but now I am a woman again -- as I always am when I write.
Woolf, Virginia

21.
What has a writer to be bombastic about? Whatever good a man may write is the consequence of accident, luck, or surprise, and nobody is more surprised than an honest writer when he makes a good phrase or says something truthful.
Dahlberg, Edward

22.
As a man has no right to kill one of his children if it is diseased or insane, so a man who has made the gradual and conscious expression of his personality in literature the aim of his life, has no right to suppress himself any carefully considered work which seemed good enough when it was written. Suppression, if it is deserved, will come rapidly enough from the same causes that suppress the unworthy members of a man's family.
Synge, J. M.

23.
From the point of view of literature Mr. Kipling is a genius who drops his aspirates. From the point of view of life, he is a reporter who knows vulgarity better than any one has ever known it.
Wilde, Oscar

24.
The writer's only responsibility is to his art. He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one. He has a dream. Everything goes by the board: honor, pride, decency, security, happiness, all, to get the book written. If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the Ode on a Grecian Urn is worth any number of old ladies.
Faulkner, William

25.
It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up, because by that time I was too famous.
Benchley, Robert

26.
When writers meet they are truculent, indifferent, or over-polite. Then comes the inevitable moment. A shows B that he has read something of B s. Will B show A? If not, then A hates B, if yes, then all is well. The only other way for writers to meet is to share a quick pee over a common lamp-post.
Connolly, Cyril

27.
Every writer is a narcissist. This does not mean that he is vain; it only means that he is hopelessly self-absorbed.
Rosten, Leo

28.
If you want to be a writer-stop talking about it and sit down and write!
Collins, Jackie

29.
The characteristic of Chaucer is intensity: of Spencer, remoteness: of Milton elevation and of Shakespeare everything.
Hazlitt, William

30.
We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.
Hemingway, Ernest

31.
My own experience has been that the tools I need for my trade are paper, tobacco, food, and a little whisky.
Faulkner, William

32.
When all things are equal, translucence in writing is more effective than transparency, just as glow is more revealing than glare.
Thurber, James

33.
Like stones, words are laborious and unforgiving, and the fitting of them together, like the fitting of stones, demands great patience and strength of purpose and particular skill.
Morrison, Edmund

34.
Writing is conscience, scruple, and the farming of our ancestors.
Dahlberg, Edward

35.
You can fire your secretary, divorce your spouse, abandon your children. But they remain your co-authors forever.
Goodman, Ellen

36.
Great writers are the saints for the godless.
Brookner, Anita

37.
We do not write in order to be understood; we write in order to understand.
Lewis, Cecil Day

38.
Life cannot defeat a writer who is in love with writing; for life itself is a writer's love until death.
Ferber, Edna

39.
If you describe things as better than they are, you are considered to be a romantic; if you describe things as worse than they are, you will be called a realist; and if you describe things exactly as they are, you will be thought of as a satirist.
Crisp, Quentin

40.
Mostly, we authors must repeat ourselves -- that's the truth. We have two or three great moving experiences in our lives -- experiences so great and moving that it doesn't seem at the time that anyone else has been so caught up and pounded and dazzled and astonished and beaten and broken and rescued and illuminated and rewarded and humbled in just that way ever before.

41.
A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit.
Bach, Richard

42.
No doubt I shall go on writing, stumbling across tundras of unmeaning, planting words like bloody flags in my wake. Loose ends, things unrelated, shifts, nightmare journeys, cities arrived at and left, meetings, desertions, betrayals, all manner of unions, adulteries, triumphs, defeats... these are the facts.
Trocchi, Alexander

43.
For a creative writer possession of the truth is less important than emotional sincerity.
Orwell, George

44.
The only living works are those which have drained much of the author's own life into them.
Butler, Samuel

45.
If I had not existed, someone else would have written me, Hemingway, Dostoevski, all of us.
Faulkner, William

46.
I am paid by the word, so I always write the shortest words possible.
Russell, Bertrand

47.
A word is a bud attempting to become a twig. How can one not dream while writing? It is the pen which dreams. The blank page gives the right to dream.
Bachelard, Gaston

48.
Ultimately, literature is nothing but carpentry. With both you are working with reality, a material just as hard as wood.
Marquez, Gabriel Garcia

49.
Yes, it's hard to write, but it's harder not to.
Doren, Carl Van

50.
To write is to make oneself the echo of what cannot cease speaking -- and since it cannot, in order to become its echo I have, in a way, to silence it. I bring to this incessant speech the decisiveness, the authority of my own silence.
Blanchot, Maurice


Daily Inspirational Quotes on

The wisdom of the wise, and the experience of ages, may be preserved by Motivational Quotes.
Quotes on Ability
Achievement
Acting and actors
Action
Adversity
Quotes on Advertising
Advice
Age
Age and aging
Alcohol and alcoholism
Quotes on Ambition
America
Anger
Animals
Appearance
Quotes on Argument
Art
Atheism
Attitude
Beauty
Quotes on Belief
Body
Books
Books - reading
Bores and boredom
Quotes on Business
Change
Character
Charity
Children
Quotes on Choice
Christians and christianity
Churches
Civilization
Colleges and universities
Quotes on Commitment
Common sense
Communication
Communism and socialism
Competition
Quotes on Complaints and complaining
Computers
Concentration
Confidence
Conflict
Quotes on Contentment
Control
Conversation
Cooperation
Courage
Quotes on Creativity
Crime and criminals
Criticism
Culture
Death
Quotes on Education
Effort
Enemies
Enthusiasm
Equality
Quotes on Evil
Evolution
Example
Excellence
Expectation
Quotes on Experience
Facts
Failure
Faith
Fame
Quotes on Family
Fashion
Fate
Fear
Feminism
Quotes on Fiction
Focus
Food
Food and eating
Fools and foolishness
Quotes on Forgiveness
Freedom
Friends and friendship
Friendship
Genius
Quotes on Giving
Goals
God
Goodness
Gossip
Quotes on Government
Gratitude
Greatness
Grief
Growth
Quotes on Habit
Happiness
Hatred
Health
Heaven
Quotes on Heroes and heroism
History and historians
Hollywood
Home
Honesty
Quotes on Honor
Hope
Humankind
Humility
Humor
Quotes on Ideas
Ignorance
Imagination
Individuality
Integrity
Quotes on Intelligence and intellectuals
Jesus christ
Journalism and journalists
Joy
Judgment and judges
Quotes on Justice
Kindness
Knowledge
Language
Laughter
Quotes on Law and lawyers
Laziness
Leadership
Learning
Liberty
Quotes on Lies and lying
Life
Listening
Literature
Loneliness
Quotes on Losers and losing
Love
Luck
Management
Manners
Quotes on Marriage
Media
Medicine
Memory
Men
Quotes on Mind
Mistakes
Money
Morality
Mothers
Quotes on Motivation
Music
Nations
Nature
Obstacles
Quotes on Opinions
Opportunity
Optimism
Pain
Parents and parenting
Quotes on Passion
Past
Patience
Patriotism
Peace
Quotes on People
Perfection
Perseverance
Persuasion
Philosophers and philosophy
Quotes on Photography
Planning
Pleasure
Poetry and poets
Politics
Quotes on Possibilities
Potential
Poverty and the poor
Power
Praise
Quotes on Prayer
Prejudice
Present
Pride
Problems
Quotes on Procrastination
Progress
Proverbs
Purpose
Quotations
Quotes on Reality
Reason
Relationship
Religion
Reputation
Quotes on Respectability
Responsibility
Riches
Risk
Science
Quotes on Secrets
Security
Self-esteem
Service
Silence
Quotes on Simplicity
Sin
Sleep
Society
Solitude
Quotes on Speakers and speaking
Speech
Spirituality
Success
Suffering
Quotes on Talent
Taxes and taxation
Teacher
The future
Theater
Quotes on Things and little things
Thoughts and thinking
Time
Travel
Trust
Quotes on Truth
Twentieth century
Understanding
Victory
Virtue
Quotes on Vision
War
Wealth
Winners and winning
Wisdom
Quotes on Wives
Women
Words
Work
World
Quotes on Worry
Writers and writing
Writing
Youth

Test your English Language
Benefits of Black raisins
Gym guide Ideas
Isaac Newton
Benefits of Broccli
Spectacular Hiking Trails Around The World
Benefits of Collard
Amazing Pakistani Mehndi Designs
Cinderella
Benefits of Broccoli
Incredible Meals You Can Make In A Mason Jar
Benefits of Chives
Interior Design Ideas
Selfie Ideas
Dog Breeds
Most Terrifying Civilizations In the History of the World
Cartoon Characters
Cartoons Characters That You Wish Were Real
Celebration of Dhanteras