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Writers and writing

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
Writers and writing Motivational Quotes



Best Quotes about Writers and writing

1.
The trouble with young writers is that they are all in their sixties.
Maugham, W. Somerset

2.
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.

3.
For your born writer, nothing is so healing as the realization that he has come upon the right word.
Bowen, Catherine Drinker

4.
An author who speaks about his own books is almost as bad as a mother who talks about her own children.
Disraeli, Benjamin

5.
The cure for writers cramp is writer's block.
Leon, Inigo de

6.
You must often make erasures if you mean to write what is worthy of being read a second time; and don't labor for the admiration of the crowd, but be content with a few choice readers.
Horace

7.
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

8.
Writing a novel without being asked seems a bit like having a baby when you have nowhere to live.
Ellman, Lucy

9.
To be a good diarist, one must have a snouty, sneaky mind.
Nicolson, Harold

10.
Whiskey has killed more men than bullets, but most men would rather be full of whiskey than bullets. What I like in a good author is not what he says, but what he whispers.
Smith, Logan Pearsall

11.
Every writer is a narcissist. This does not mean that he is vain; it only means that he is hopelessly self-absorbed.
Rosten, Leo

12.
Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.
Franklin, Benjamin

13.
For a creative writer possession of the truth is less important than emotional sincerity.
Orwell, George

14.
There are two kinds of writers; the great ones who can give you truths, and the lessor ones, who can only give you themselves.
Fadiman, Clifton

15.
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

16.
Manuscript: something submitted in haste and returned at leisure.
Herford, Oliver

17.
Good writing is clear thinking made visible.
Wheeler, Bill

18.
A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit.
Bach, Richard

19.
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

20.
A book should be luminous not voluminous.
Bovee, Christian Nevell

21.
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.

22.
Writing is a craft not an art.
Zinsser, William

23.
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

24.
Every writer creates his own precursors. His work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify the future.
Borges, Jorge Luis

25.
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

26.
I am always interested in why young people become writers, and from talking with many I have concluded that most do not want to be writers working eight and ten hours a day and accomplishing little; they want to have been writers, garnering the rewards of having completed a best-seller. They aspire to the rewards of writing but not to the travail.
Michener, James A.

27.
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

28.
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

29.
What I like in a good author isn't what he says, but what he whispers.
Smith, Logan Pearsall

30.
When all things are equal, translucence in writing is more effective than transparency, just as glow is more revealing than glare.
Thurber, James

31.
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

32.
What an occupation! To sit and flay your fellow men and then offer their skins for sale and expect them to buy them.
Strindberg, J. August

33.
If written directions alone would suffice, libraries wouldn't need to have the rest of the universities attached.
Martin, Judith

34.
The moving finger writes, and having written moves on. Nor all thy piety nor all thy wit, can cancel half a line of it.
Khayyam, Omar

35.
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

36.
I'm the kind of writer that people think other people are reading.
Naipaul, V. S.

37.
Style and Structure are the essence of a book; great ideas are hogwash.
Nabokov, Vladimir

38.
The writer is more concerned to know than to judge.
Maugham, W. Somerset

39.
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

40.
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.

41.
Writing is the continuation of politics by other means.
Sollers, Philippe

42.
The writing of the wise are the only riches our posterity cannot squander.
Landor, Walter Savage

43.
Fundamentally, all writing is about the same thing; it's about dying, about the brief flicker of time we have here, and the frustration that it creates.
Richler, Mordecai

44.
Writing is like getting married. One should never commit oneself until one is amazed at one's luck.
Murdoch, Iris

45.
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

46.
He is a man of thirty-five, but looks fifty. He is bald, has varicose veins and wears spectacles, or would wear them if his only pair were not chronically lost. If things are normal with him, he will be suffering from malnutrition, but if he has recently had a lucky streak, he will be suffering from a hangover. At present it is half past eleven in the morning, and according to his schedule he should have started work two hours ago; but even if he had made any serious effort to start he would have been frustrated by the almost continuous ringing of the telephone bell, the yells of the baby, the rattle of an electric drill out in the street, and the heavy boots of his creditors clumping up the stairs. The most recent interruption was the arrival of the second post, which brought him two circulars and an income tax demand printed in red. Needless to say this person is a writer.
Orwell, George

47.
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

48.
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

49.
A writer never reads his work. For him, it is the unreadable, a secret, and he cannot remain face to face with it. A secret, because he is separated from it.
Blanchot, Maurice

50.
Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing.
Mailer, Norman


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