Motivational Quotes

Writers and writing

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

- Benchley, Robert

Best Quotes about Writers and writing

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

Russell, Bertrand

The trouble with young writers is that they are all in their sixties.

Maugham, W. Somerset

Every secret of a writer's soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written large in his works.

Woolf, Virginia

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

Smith, Logan Pearsall

Whores and writers, Mahound. We are the people you can't forgive.

Rushdie, Salman

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

Churchill, Charles

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

Bowen, Catherine Drinker

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

Paz, Octavio

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

10.

Writing crystallizes thought and thought produces action.

Meyer, Paul J.

11.

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

12.

I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can.

Hemingway, Ernest

13.

Mostly, we authors must repeat ourselves -- that's the truth. We have two or three great moving experiences in our lives -- experiences so great and moving that it doesn't seem at the time that anyone else has been so caught up and pounded and dazzled and astonished and beaten and broken and rescued and illuminated and rewarded and humbled in just that way ever before.

14.

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

Steinbeck, John

15.

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

Benchley, Robert

16.

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

Horace

17.

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

18.

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

19.

It's hard enough to write a good drama, it's much harder to write a good comedy, and it's hardest of all to write a drama with comedy. Which is what life is.

Lemmon, Jack

20.

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

21.

There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately no one knows what they are.

Maugham, W. Somerset

22.

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

Joyce, James

23.

Writers like teeth are divided into incisors and grinders.

Bagehot, Walter

24.

My own experience has been that the tools I need for my trade are paper, tobacco, food, and a little whisky.

Faulkner, William

25.

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.

26.

For a country to have a great writer is like having another government. That's why no r?gime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones.

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander

27.

Every writing career starts as a personal quest for sainthood, for self-betterment. Sooner or later, and as a rule quite soon, a man discovers that his pen accomplishes a lot more than his soul.

Brodsky, Joseph

28.

I hate the actor and audience business. An author should be in among the crowd, kicking their shins or cheering them on to some mischief or merriment.

Lawrence, D. H.

29.

Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about.

Auden, W. H.

30.

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

Marx, Groucho

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

Sontag, Susan

34.

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

Wilde, Oscar

35.

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.

36.

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

Hemingway, Ernest

37.

Writers must fortify themselves with pride and egotism as best they can. The process is analogous to using sandbags and loose timbers to protect a house against flood. Writers are vulnerable creatures like anyone else. For what do they have in reality? Not sandbags, not timbers. Just a flimsy reputation and a name.

Aldiss, Brian

38.

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

39.

Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence.

Walker, Alice

40.

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

41.

You don't write because you want to say something; you write because you've got something to say.

42.

The need to express oneself in writing springs from a mal-adjustment to life, or from an inner conflict which the adolescent (or the grown man) cannot resolve in action. Those to whom action comes as easily as breathing rarely feel the need to break loose from the real, to rise above, and describe it... I do not mean that it is enough to be maladjusted to become a great writer, but writing is, for some, a method of resolving a conflict, provided they have the necessary talent.

Maurois, Andre

43.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

44.

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

45.

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

White, Elwyn Brooks

46.

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

Baldwin, James

47.

Who wants to become a writer? And why? Because it's the answer to everything. To Why am I here? To uselessness. It's the streaming reason for living. To note, to pin down, to build up, to create, to be astonished at nothing, to cherish the oddities, to let nothing go down the drain, to make something, to make a great flower out of life, even if it's a cactus.

Bagnold, Enid

48.

Good writing is clear thinking made visible.

Wheeler, Bill

49.

If the doctor told me I had six minutes to live, I'd type a little faster.

Asimov, Isaac

50.

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