Mobsea Logo
Home

Motivational Quotes

Writers and writing

If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don't listen to writers talking about writing or themselves.
- Hellman, Lillian
Writers and writing Motivational Quotes



Best Quotes about Writers and writing

1.
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

2.
Writing is a craft not an art.
Zinsser, William

3.
Every human being has hundreds of separate people living under his skin. The talent of a writer is his ability to give them their separate names, identities, personalities and have them relate to other characters living with him.
Brooks, Mel

4.
Essential characteristic of the really great novelist: a Christ-like, all-embracing compassion.
Bennett, Arnold

5.
If you wish to be a writer; write!
Epictetus

6.
No pen, no ink, no table, no room, no time, no quiet, no inclination.
Joyce, James

7.
People want to know why I do this, why I write such gross stuff. I like to tell them that I have the heart of a small boy -- and I keep it in a jar on my desk.
King, Stephen

8.
Nothing written for pay is worth printing. Only what has been written against the market.
Pound, Ezra

9.
He is outside of everything, and alien everywhere. He is an aesthetic solitary. His beautiful, light imagination is the wing that on the autumn evening just brushes the dusky window.
James, Henry

10.
The writer is more concerned to know than to judge.
Maugham, W. Somerset

11.
A great writer creates a world of his own and his readers are proud to live in it. A lesser writer may entice them in for a moment, but soon he will watch them filing out.
Connolly, Cyril

12.
To be a good diarist, one must have a snouty, sneaky mind.
Nicolson, Harold

13.
O Grub Street! how do I bemoan thee, whose graceless children scorn to own thee! . Yet thou hast greater cause to be ashamed of them, than they of thee.
Swift, Jonathan

14.
Yes, it's hard to write, but it's harder not to.
Doren, Carl Van

15.
A good writer is basically a story teller, not a scholar or a redeemer of mankind.
Singer, Isaac Bashevis

16.
Any man who can write a page of living prose adds something to our life, and the man who can, as I can, is surely the last to resent someone who can do it even better. An artist cannot deny art, nor would he want to. A lover cannot deny love.
Chandler, Raymond

17.
A writer should be a joyous optimist. Anything that implies rejection of life is wrong for a writer.
Gribbon, George

18.
To write something, you have to risk making a fool of yourself.
Rice, Anne

19.
Footnotes -- little dogs yapping at the heels of the text
James, William

20.
Like all writers, he measured the achievements of others by what they had accomplished, asking of them that they measure him by what he envisaged or planned.
Borges, Jorge Luis

21.
You enter a state of controlled passivity, you relax your grip and accept that even if your declared intention is to justify the ways of God to man, you might end up interesting your readers rather more in Satan.
Mcewan, Ian

22.
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

23.
What I like in a good author isn't what he says, but what he whispers.
Smith, Logan Pearsall

24.
Great writers are the saints for the godless.
Brookner, Anita

25.
The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof, shit detector. This is the writer's radar and all great writers have had it.
Hemingway, Ernest

26.
Writing is to descend like a miner to the depths of the mine with a lamp on your forehead, a light whose dubious brightness falsifies everything, whose wick is in permanent danger of explosion, whose blinking illumination in the coal dust exhausts and corrodes your eyes.
Sauser, Blaise Cendrars

27.
All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.

28.
After all, most writing is done away from the typewriter, away from the desk. I'd say it occurs in the quiet, silent moments, while you're walking or shaving or playing a game, or whatever, or even talking to someone you're not vitally interested in.
Miller, Henry

29.
The writer isn't made in a vacuum. Writers are witnesses. The reason we need writers is because we need witnesses to this terrifying century.
Doctorow, E. L.

30.
One reason writers write is out of revenge. Life hurts; certain ideas and experiences hurt; one wants to clarify, to set out illuminations, to replay the old bad scenes and get the Treppenworte said -- the words one didn't have the strength or ripeness to say when those words were necessary for one's dignity or survival.
Ozick, Cynthia

31.
All writers are vain, selfish and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives lies a mystery. Writing a book is a long, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.
Orwell, George

32.
But this I know; the writer who possesses the creative gift owns something of which he is not always master -- something that at times strangely wills and works for itself. If the result be attractive, the World will praise you, who little deserve praise; if it be repulsive, the same World will blame you, who almost as little deserve blame.
Bronte, Charlotte

33.
The walls are the publishers of the poor.
Galeano, Eduardo

34.
I believe that it is my job not only to write books but to have them published. A book is like a child. You have to defend the life of a child.
Konrad, George

35.
He who cannot limit himself will never know how to write.
Boileau, Nicholas

36.
The best way to become a successful writer is to read good writing, remember it, and then forget where you remember it from.
Fowler, Gene

37.
The process of writing has something infinite about it. Even though it is interrupted each night, it is one single notation.
Canetti, Elias

38.
The first essential in writing about anything is that the writer should have no experience of the matter.
Duncan, Isadora

39.
I think of an author as somebody who goes into the marketplace and puts down his rug and says, I will tell you a story, and then he passes the hat.
Davies, Robertson

40.
The future author is one who discovers that language, the exploration and manipulation of the resources of language, will serve him in winning through to his way.
Wilder, Thornton

41.
Agatha Christie has given more pleasure in bed than any other woman.
Smith, Nancy Banks

42.
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

43.
I was brought up in the great tradition of the late nineteenth century: that a writer never complains, never explains and never disdains.
Michener, James A.

44.
The first thing an unpublished author should remember is that no one asked him to write in the first place. With this firmly in mind, he has no right to become discouraged just because other people are being published.
Farrar, John

45.
Writers must fortify themselves with pride and egotism as best they can. The process is analogous to using sandbags and loose timbers to protect a house against flood. Writers are vulnerable creatures like anyone else. For what do they have in reality? Not sandbags, not timbers. Just a flimsy reputation and a name.
Aldiss, Brian

46.
The cure for writers cramp is writer's block.
Leon, Inigo de

47.
A book should be luminous not voluminous.
Bovee, Christian Nevell

48.
The only phenomenon with which writing has always been concomitant is the creation of cities and empires, that is the integration of large numbers of individuals into a political system, and their grading into castes or classes. It seems to have favored the exploitation of human beings rather than their enlightenment.
Levi-Strauss, Claude

49.
If written directions alone would suffice, libraries wouldn't need to have the rest of the universities attached.
Martin, Judith

50.
The hard necessity of bringing the judge on the bench down into the dock has been the peculiar responsibility of the writer in all ages of man.
Algren, Nelson


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 Fennel Seeds
Intriguing Lost Cities Around the World
Ten Ball Billiards
Govardhan Puja Celebration
Washington
Rose Day
Most Beautiful Flowers on Earth
Eye care tips for Computer users
International Sport Events
Makeover Tips For Eyes
Tips to succeed in Weight Loss
Benefits of Turmeric
Valentines Day for Kids
What to Eat in Delhi
Greatest Fashion Models
Cartoon Characters
Cartoons Characters That You Wish Were Real
Celebration of Dhanteras