Motivational Quotes

Writers and writing

He who cannot limit himself will never know how to write.

- Boileau, Nicholas

Best Quotes about Writers and writing

Writing is thinking on paper.

Zinsser, William

In a sense the world dies every time a writer dies, because, if he is any good, he has been a wet nurse to humanity during his entire existence and has held earth close around him, like the little obstetrical toad that goes about with a cluster of eggs attached to his legs.

White, Elwyn Brooks

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

Gribbon, George

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

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

Thurber, James

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

Analogies, it is true, decide nothing, but they can make one feel more at home.

Freud, Sigmund

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

The writer is more concerned to know than to judge.

Maugham, W. Somerset

10.

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.

11.

Writing is the continuation of politics by other means.

Sollers, Philippe

12.

Let's face it, writing is hell.

Styron, William

13.

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

Rice, Anne

14.

Let authors write for glory and reward. The truth is well paid when she is sung and heard.

Corbett, James J.

15.

Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings so that you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for.

Socrates

16.

The best emotions to write out of are anger and fear or dread. The least energizing emotion to write out of is admiration. It is very difficult to write out of because the basic feeling that goes with admiration is a passive contemplative mood.

Sontag, Susan

17.

A writer is someone who can make a riddle out of an answer.

Kraus, Karl

18.

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

Shaw, Irwin

19.

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

Smith, Nancy Banks

20.

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

21.

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

Bowen, Catherine Drinker

22.

I like to write when I feel spiteful. It is like having a good sneeze.

Lawrence, D. H.

23.

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

24.

Hard writing makes easy reading. Easy writing makes hard reading.

Zinsser, William

25.

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

26.

To withdraw myself from myself has ever been my sole, my entire, my sincere motive in scribbling at all.

Byron, Lord

27.

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

Benchley, Robert

28.

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

Auden, W. H.

29.

If I had more time I would write a shorter letter.

Pascal, Blaise

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

Hemingway, Ernest

33.

Herman Melville was as separated from a civilized literature as the lost Atlantis was said to have been from the great peoples of the earth.

Dahlberg, Edward

34.

To write is a humiliation.

Dahlberg, Edward

35.

Writing is turning one's worst moments into money.

Donleavy, J. P.

36.

I don't regard Brecht as a man of iron-gray purpose and intellect, I think he is a theatrical whore of the first quality.

Hall, Sir Peter

37.

What no wife of a writer can ever understand is that a writer is working when he's staring out of the window.

Rascoe, Burton

38.

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

Sontag, Susan

39.

Of the creative spirits that flourished in Concord, Massachusetts, during the middle of the nineteenth century, it might be said that Hawthorne loved men but felt estranged from them, Emerson loved ideas even more than men, and Thoreau loved himself.

Edel, Leon

40.

Writers are always selling somebody out.

Didion, Joan

41.

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

Murdoch, Iris

42.

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

43.

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

44.

I write in order to attain that feeling of tension relieved and function achieved which a cow enjoys on giving milk.

Mencken, H. L.

45.

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

Faulkner, William

46.

A book should be luminous not voluminous.

Bovee, Christian Nevell

47.

Writers and politicians are natural rivals. Both groups try to make the world in their own images; they fight for the same territory.

Rushdie, Salman

48.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

49.

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

White, Elwyn Brooks

50.

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