Motivational Quotes

Writers and writing

I cringe when critics say I'm a master of the popular novel. What's an unpopular novel?

- Shaw, Irwin

Best Quotes about Writers and writing

There is no luck in literary reputation. They who make up the final verdict upon every book are not the partial and noisy readers of the hour when it appears; but a court as of angels, a public not to be bribed, not to be entreated, and not to be overawed, decides upon every man's title to fame.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

Smith, Nancy Banks

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

Zinsser, William

Writing is thinking on paper.

Zinsser, William

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.

Good writing is clear thinking made visible.

Wheeler, Bill

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

Raine, Craig

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

An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmasters of ever afterwards.

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

13.

Writing is the continuation of politics by other means.

Sollers, Philippe

14.

The only way out is the way through, just as you cannot escape from death except by dying. Being unable to write, you must examine in writing this being unable, which becomes for the present -- henceforth? -- the subject to which you are condemned.

Nemerov, Howard

15.

Writing is a craft not an art.

Zinsser, William

16.

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

Pound, Ezra

17.

No poet or novelist wishes he were the only one who ever lived, but most of them wish they were the only one alive, and quite a number fondly believe their wish has been granted.

Auden, W. H.

18.

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

19.

A pathological business, writing, don't you think? Just look what a writer actually does: all that unnatural tense squatting and hunching, all those rituals: pathological!

Enzensberger, Hans Magnus

20.

Each writer is born with a repertory company in his head. Shakespeare has perhaps 20 players, and Tennessee Williams has about 5, and Samuel Beckett one -- and maybe a clone of that one. I have 10 or so, and that's a lot. As you get older, you become more skillful at casting them.

Vidal, Gore

21.

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

22.

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

Martin, Judith

23.

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

Dahlberg, Edward

24.

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

Russell, Bertrand

25.

To write is a humiliation.

Dahlberg, Edward

26.

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

27.

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

Faulkner, William

28.

Footnotes -- little dogs yapping at the heels of the text

James, William

29.

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

Bach, Richard

30.

Writers, you know, are the beggars of Western society.

Paz, Octavio

31.

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

32.

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

Sontag, Susan

33.

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

34.

Style may defined as the proper words in the proper places.

Swift, Jonathan

35.

It requires more than mere genius to be an author.

La Bruyere, Jean De

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

39.

The creations of a great writer are little more than the moods and passions of his own heart, given surnames and Christian names, and sent to walk the earth.

Yeats, William Butler

40.

I never think when I write. Nobody can do two things at the same time and do them well.

Marquis, Don

41.

The writer is more concerned to know than to judge.

Maugham, W. Somerset

42.

The writer must write what he has to say, not speak it.

Hemingway, Ernest

43.

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

Joyce, James

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

49.

A writer is a person who has solutions for which there are no riddles.

Nunn, Gregory

50.

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

Twain, Mark