Motivational Quotes

Writers and writing

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

- Bowen, Catherine Drinker

Best Quotes about Writers and writing

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

Twain, Mark

We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.

Hemingway, Ernest

Great writers are the saints for the godless.

Brookner, Anita

The discipline of the written word punishes both stupidity and dishonesty.

Steinbeck, John

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

Writers are always selling somebody out.

Didion, Joan

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

Work on good prose has three steps: a musical stage when it is composed, an architectonic one when it is built, and a textile one when it is woven.

Benjamin, Walter

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

10.

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

Dahlberg, Edward

11.

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

12.

Writing is the incurable itch that possesses many.

Juvenal, (Decimus Junius Juvenalis)

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.

To write is a humiliation.

Dahlberg, Edward

15.

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.

16.

Mr. Faulkner, of course, is interested in making your mind rather than your flesh creep.

Fadiman, Clifton

17.

If you're going to write, don't pretend to write down. It's going to be the best you can do, and it's the fact that it's the best you can do that kills you.

Parker, Dorothy

18.

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

19.

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

Ferber, Edna

20.

If a nation loses its storytellers, it loses its childhood.

Handke, Peter

21.

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.

22.

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

23.

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

Marquis, Don

24.

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

Nabokov, Vladimir

25.

What you're trying to do when you write is to crowd the reader out of his own space and occupy it with yours, in a good cause. You're trying to take over his sensibility and deliver an experience that moves from mere information.

Stone, Robert

26.

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

27.

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

Joyce, James

28.

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

Thurber, James

29.

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

30.

Writing crystallizes thought and thought produces action.

Meyer, Paul J.

31.

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

32.

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

James, William

33.

Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them.

O'Connor, Flannery

34.

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, as those move easiest who have learned to dance. 'Tis not enough no harshness gives offence. The sound must seem an echo to the sense.

Pope, Alexander

35.

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

Rice, Anne

36.

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

37.

Good novels are not written by orthodoxy-sniffers, nor by people who are conscience-stricken about their own orthodoxy. Good novels are written by people who are not frightened.

Orwell, George

38.

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

39.

The writer is more concerned to know than to judge.

Maugham, W. Somerset

40.

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

41.

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

Swift, Jonathan

42.

The trouble began with Forster. After him it was considered ungentlemanly to write more than five or six novels.

Burgess, Anthony

43.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

44.

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