Motivational Quotes

Writers and writing

Writing is a question of finding a certain rhythm. I compare it to the rhythms of jazz. Much of the time life is a sort of rhythmic progression of three characters. If one tells oneself that life is like that, one feels it less arbitrary.

- Sagan, Francoise

Best Quotes about Writers and writing

If any man wishes to write a clear style, let him first be clear in his thoughts.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

In most cases a favorite writer is more with us in his book than he ever could have been in the flesh; since, being a writer, he is one who has studied and perfected this particular mode of personal incarnation, very likely to the detriment of any other. I should like as a matter of curiosity to see and hear for a moment the men whose works I admire; but I should hardly expect to find further intercourse particularly profitable.

Cooley, Charles Horton

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

This morning I took out a comma and this afternoon I put it back in again.

Wilde, Oscar

Nothing written for pay is worth printing. Only what has been written against the market.

Pound, Ezra

If I had more time I would write a shorter letter.

Pascal, Blaise

Writers seldom choose as friends those self-contained characters who are never in trouble, never unhappy or ill, never make mistakes, and always count their change when it is handed to them.

Bowen, Catherine Drinker

Writers are always selling somebody out.

Didion, Joan

Writing ought either to be the manufacture of stories for which there is a market demand -- a business as safe and commendable as making soap or breakfast foods -- or it should be an art, which is always a search for something for which there is no market demand, something new and untried, where the values are intrinsic and have nothing to do with standardized values.

Cather, Willa

10.

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

11.

A writer writes not because he is educated but because he is driven by the need to communicate. Behind the need to communicate is the need to share. Behind the need to share is the need to be understood. The writer wants to be understood much more than he wants to be respected or praised or even loved. And that perhaps, is what makes him different from others.

Rosten, Leo

12.

The writer is either a practicing recluse or a delinquent, guilt-ridden one; or both. Usually both.

Sontag, Susan

13.

I love being a writer, what I can't stand is the paperwork.

Vries, Peter De

14.

Style and Structure are the essence of a book; great ideas are hogwash.

Nabokov, Vladimir

15.

The writer is more concerned to know than to judge.

Maugham, W. Somerset

16.

Writing crystallizes thought and thought produces action.

Meyer, Paul J.

17.

A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit.

Bach, Richard

18.

Work on good prose has three steps: a musical stage when it is composed, an architectonic one when it is built, and a textile one when it is woven.

Benjamin, Walter

19.

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

20.

If you wish to be a writer; write!

Epictetus

21.

The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.

Vorse, Mary Heaton

22.

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

Rice, Anne

23.

Of course I'm a black writer. I'm not just a black writer, but categories like black writer, woman writer and Latin American writer aren't marginal anymore. We have to acknowledge that the thing we call literature is more pluralistic now, just as society ought to be. The melting pot never worked. We ought to be able to accept on equal terms everybody from the Hasidim to Walter Lippmann, from the Rastafarians to Ralph Bunche.

Morrison, Toni

24.

Let your literary compositions be kept from the public eye for nine years.

Horace

25.

The walls are the publishers of the poor.

Galeano, Eduardo

26.

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

Ferber, Edna

27.

In a sense the world dies every time a writer dies, because, if he is any good, he has been a wet nurse to humanity during his entire existence and has held earth close around him, like the little obstetrical toad that goes about with a cluster of eggs attached to his legs.

White, Elwyn Brooks

28.

Every writer hopes or boldly assumes that his life is in some sense exemplary, that the particular will turn out to be universal.

Amis, Martin

29.

Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar.

White, Elwyn Brooks

30.

Manuscript: something submitted in haste and returned at leisure.

Herford, Oliver

31.

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

Woolf, Virginia

32.

I never know what I think about something until I read what I've written on it.

Faulkner, William

33.

It is rarely that you see an American writer who is not hopelessly sane.

Anderson, Margaret

34.

The secret of all good writing is sound judgment.

Horace

35.

Although most of us know Vincent van Gogh in Arles and Paul Gauguin in Tahiti as if they were neighbors -- somewhat disreputable but endlessly fascinating -- none of us can name two French generals or department store owners of that period. I take enormous pride in considering myself an artist, one of the necessaries.

Michener, James A.

36.

The responsibility of a writer is to excavate the experience of the people who produced him.

Baldwin, James

37.

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

38.

The writing of the wise are the only riches our posterity cannot squander.

Landor, Walter Savage

39.

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

Hazlitt, William

40.

I can write better than anybody who can write faster, and I can write faster than anybody who can write better.

Liebling, A. J.

41.

As to the adjective, when in doubt strike it out.

Twain, Mark

42.

The writer's language is to some degree the product of his own action; he is both the historian and the agent of his own language.

Man, Paul De

43.

It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by. How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment? for the moment passes, it is forgotten; the mood is gone; life itself is gone. That is where the writer scores over his fellows: he catches the changes of his mind on the hop. Growth is exciting; growth is dynamic and alarming. Growth of the soul, growth of the mind.

Sackville-West, Vita

44.

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

45.

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

Smith, Logan Pearsall

46.

Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer's loneliness, but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.

Hemingway, Ernest

47.

A book should be luminous not voluminous.

Bovee, Christian Nevell

48.

To note an artist's limitations is but to define his talent. A reporter can write equally well about everything that is presented to his view, but a creative writer can do his best only with what lies within the range and character of his deepest sympathies.

Cather, Willa

49.

Writing is turning one's worst moments into money.

Donleavy, J. P.

50.

His style is chaos illumined by flashes of lightning. As a writer he has mastered everything except language.

Wilde, Oscar