Motivational Quotes

Writers and writing

But this I know; the writer who possesses the creative gift owns something of which he is not always master -- something that at times strangely wills and works for itself. If the result be attractive, the World will praise you, who little deserve praise; if it be repulsive, the same World will blame you, who almost as little deserve blame.

- Bronte, Charlotte

Best Quotes about Writers and writing

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

Murdoch, Iris

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

Marquis, Don

Yes, it's hard to write, but it's harder not to.

Doren, Carl Van

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

Smith, Logan Pearsall

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

Nabokov, Vladimir

The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.

Vorse, Mary Heaton

The first essential in writing about anything is that the writer should have no experience of the matter.

Duncan, Isadora

It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by. How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment? for the moment passes, it is forgotten; the mood is gone; life itself is gone. That is where the writer scores over his fellows: he catches the changes of his mind on the hop. Growth is exciting; growth is dynamic and alarming. Growth of the soul, growth of the mind.

Sackville-West, Vita

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

10.

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

11.

Writing is more than anything a compulsion, like some people wash their hands thirty times a day for fear of awful consequences if they do not. It pays a whole lot better than this type of compulsion, but it is no more heroic.

Burchill, Julie

12.

To write is a humiliation.

Dahlberg, Edward

13.

The writer is more concerned to know than to judge.

Maugham, W. Somerset

14.

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.

15.

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

Lewis, Cecil Day

16.

Paper and ink are all but trash, if I cannot find the thought which the writer did think.

Smith, Dr. Walter

17.

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.

18.

For a creative writer possession of the truth is less important than emotional sincerity.

Orwell, George

19.

I'm the kind of writer that people think other people are reading.

Naipaul, V. S.

20.

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

21.

The walls are the publishers of the poor.

Galeano, Eduardo

22.

The cure for writers cramp is writer's block.

Leon, Inigo de

23.

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

Shaw, Irwin

24.

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

Rushdie, Salman

25.

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

26.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

27.

This is something that I cannot get over -- that a whole line could be written by half a man, that a work could be built on the quicksand of a character.

Kraus, Karl

28.

I make no complaint. I am a writer. I do not accept my condition; I will strive to change it; but I inhabit it, I am trying to learn from it.

Rushdie, Salman

29.

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

30.

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

Rice, Anne

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

Martin, Judith

34.

The writing of the wise are the only riches our posterity cannot squander.

Landor, Walter Savage

35.

Bronte, Charlotte

36.

How people treat you is their karma; how you react is yours.

Dyer, Wayne

37.

Most bad books get that way because their authors are engaged in trying to justify themselves. If a vain author is an alcoholic, then the most sympathetically portrayed character in his book will be an alcoholic. This sort of thing is very boring for outsiders.

Vizinczey, Stephen

38.

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

Thurber, James

39.

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

Pascal, Blaise

40.

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

41.

Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence.

Walker, Alice

42.

What has a writer to be bombastic about? Whatever good a man may write is the consequence of accident, luck, or surprise, and nobody is more surprised than an honest writer when he makes a good phrase or says something truthful.

Dahlberg, Edward

43.

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

Ellman, Lucy

44.

Writing is thinking on paper.

Zinsser, William

45.

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

Faulkner, William

46.

Writing is the incurable itch that possesses many.