Motivational Quotes

Writers and writing

The trade of authorship is a violent, and indestructible obsession.

- Sand, George

Best Quotes about Writers and writing

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

Twain, Mark

The free-lance writer is a man who is paid per piece or per word or perhaps.

Benchley, Robert

Good novels are not written by orthodoxy-sniffers, nor by people who are conscience-stricken about their own orthodoxy. Good novels are written by people who are not frightened.

Orwell, George

Some American writers who have known each other for years have never met in the daytime or when both were sober.

Thurber, James

Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them.

O'Connor, Flannery

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

Sontag, Susan

Practically everybody in New York has half a mind to write a book, and does.

Marx, Groucho

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

Wilde, Oscar

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

Baldwin, James

10.

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

Faulkner, William

11.

Writers aren't people exactly. Or, if they're any good, they're a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person. It's like actors, who try so pathetically not to look in mirrors. Who lean back ward trying -- only to see their faces in the reflecting chandeliers.

12.

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

Rice, Anne

13.

Writing is turning one's worst moments into money.

Donleavy, J. P.

14.

Writing is thinking on paper.

Zinsser, William

15.

There is something about the literary life that repels me, all this desperate building of castles on cobwebs, the long-drawn acrimonious struggle to make something important which we all know will be gone forever in a few years, the miasma of failure which is to me almost as offensive as the cheap gaudiness of popular success.

Chandler, Raymond

16.

Easy writings curse is hard reading.

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley

17.

Only amateurs say that they write for their own amusement. Writing is not an amusing occupation. It is a combination of ditch-digging, mountain-climbing, treadmill and childbirth. Writing may be interesting, absorbing, exhilarating, racking, relieving. But amusing? Never!

Ferber, Edna

18.

How people treat you is their karma; how you react is yours.

Dyer, Wayne

19.

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

20.

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

Canetti, Elias

21.

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

22.

Writing is the continuation of politics by other means.

Sollers, Philippe

23.

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, as those move easiest who have learned to dance. 'Tis not enough no harshness gives offence. The sound must seem an echo to the sense.

Pope, Alexander

24.

No pen, no ink, no table, no room, no time, no quiet, no inclination.

Joyce, James

25.

Great writers are the saints for the godless.

Brookner, Anita

26.

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

27.

Four basic premises of writing: clarity, brevity, simplicity, and humanity.

Zinsser, William

28.

To write is a humiliation.

Dahlberg, Edward

29.

The biggest obstacle to professional writing is the necessity for changing a typewriter ribbon.

Benchley, Robert

30.

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

31.

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

Smith, Logan Pearsall

32.

The ambivalence of writing is such that it can be considered both an act and an interpretive process that follows after an act with which it cannot coincide. As such, it both affirms and denies its own nature.

Man, Paul De

33.

The trade of authorship is a violent, and indestructible obsession.

Sand, George

34.

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

Vorse, Mary Heaton

35.

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

36.

The writer probably knows what he meant when he wrote a book, but he should immediately forget what he meant when he's written it.

Golding, William

37.

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

Bach, Richard

38.

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

39.

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

Rosten, Leo

40.

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

41.

Writing is simple. First you have to make sure you have plenty of paper... sharp pencils... typewriter ribbon. Then put your belly up to your desk... roll a sheet of paper into the typewriter... and stare at it until beads of blood appear on your forehead.

42.

Good authors, too, who once knew better words now only use four-letter words writing prose... anything goes.

Porter, Cole

43.

The writer who loses his self-doubt, who gives way as he grows old to a sudden euphoria, to prolixity, should stop writing immediately: the time has come for him to lay aside his pen.

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle

44.

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

45.

Agatha Christie has given more pleasure in bed than any other woman.

Smith, Nancy Banks

46.

We are nauseated by the sight of trivial personalities decomposing in the eternity of print.

Woolf, Virginia

47.

Good writing excites me, and makes life worth living.

Pinter, Harold

48.

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