Motivational Quotes

Writers and writing

Any writer, I suppose, feels that the world into which he was born is nothing less than a conspiracy against the cultivation of his talent.

- Baldwin, James

Best Quotes about Writers and writing

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

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

Smith, Nancy Banks

Manuscript: something submitted in haste and returned at leisure.

Herford, Oliver

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

Nunn, Gregory

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

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

Nabokov, Vladimir

Writing is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, then it becomes a master, then it becomes a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster and fling him to the public.

Churchill, Winston

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

Porter, Cole

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

Joyce, James

10.

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

Horace

11.

The profession of book writing makes horse racing seem like a solid, stable business.

Steinbeck, John

12.

It requires more than mere genius to be an author.

La Bruyere, Jean De

13.

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

Murdoch, Iris

14.

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

Gribbon, George

15.

If you wish to be a writer; write!

Epictetus

16.

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

Shaw, Irwin

17.

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

Hemingway, Ernest

18.

Who often, but without success, have prayed for apt Alliteration's artful aid.

Churchill, Charles

19.

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

20.

It's very hard to be a gentleman and a writer.

Maugham, W. Somerset

21.

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.

22.

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

Russell, Bertrand

23.

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

Benchley, Robert

24.

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

Swift, Jonathan

25.

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.

26.

Writers are always selling somebody out.

Didion, Joan

27.

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

28.

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

Baldwin, James

29.

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

Thurber, James

30.

Good writing excites me, and makes life worth living.

Pinter, Harold

31.

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.

32.

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

Rice, Anne

33.

We do not write in order to be understood; we write in order to understand.

Lewis, Cecil Day

34.

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

35.

I think it's bad to talk about one's present work, for it spoils something at the root of the creative act. It discharges the tension.

Mailer, Norman

36.

The secret of all good writing is sound judgment.

Horace

37.

A book should be luminous not voluminous.

Bovee, Christian Nevell

38.

You can fire your secretary, divorce your spouse, abandon your children. But they remain your co-authors forever.

Goodman, Ellen

39.

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

40.

If I had not existed, someone else would have written me, Hemingway, Dostoevski, all of us.

Faulkner, William

41.

The last thing we decide in writing a book is what to put first.

Pascal, Blaise

42.

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

Wilde, Oscar

43.

Any writer, I suppose, feels that the world into which he was born is nothing less than a conspiracy against the cultivation of his talent.

Baldwin, James

44.

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

Smith, Logan Pearsall

45.

Habits in writing as in life are only useful if they are broken as soon as they cease to be advantageous.

Maugham, W. Somerset

46.

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

Bennett, Arnold

47.

Writing is the hardest way of earning a living, with the possible exception of wrestling alligators.

Miller, Olin

48.

A serious writer is not to be confounded with a solemn writer. A serious writer may be a hawk or a buzzard or even a popinjay, but a solemn writer is always a bloody owl.

Hemingway, Ernest

49.

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

Ferber, Edna

50.

Great writers are the saints for the godless.

Brookner, Anita