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 to descend like a miner to the depths of the mine with a lamp on your forehead, a light whose dubious brightness falsifies everything, whose wick is in permanent danger of explosion, whose blinking illumination in the coal dust exhausts and corrodes your eyes.

Sauser, Blaise Cendrars

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

The walls are the publishers of the poor.

Galeano, Eduardo

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

Ferber, Edna

If I don't write to empty my mind, I go mad. As to that regular, uninterrupted love of writing. I do not understand it. I feel it as a torture, which I must get rid of, but never as a pleasure. On the contrary, I think composition a great pain.

Byron, Lord

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

Hemingway, Ernest

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

Ellman, Lucy

An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmasters of ever afterwards.

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

Lawrence, D. H.

10.

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

11.

The hard necessity of bringing the judge on the bench down into the dock has been the peculiar responsibility of the writer in all ages of man.

Algren, Nelson

12.

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

13.

Writing is thinking on paper.

Zinsser, William

14.

Writers aren't people exactly. Or, if they're any good, they're a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person. It's like actors, who try so pathetically not to look in mirrors. Who lean back ward trying -- only to see their faces in the reflecting chandeliers.

15.

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

16.

Writers are a little below the clowns and a little above the trained seals.

Steinbeck, John

17.

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

18.

There are two kinds of writers; the great ones who can give you truths, and the lessor ones, who can only give you themselves.

Fadiman, Clifton

19.

This morning I took out a comma and this afternoon I put it back in again.

Wilde, Oscar

20.

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

21.

Writing is the incurable itch that possesses many.

Juvenal, (Decimus Junius Juvenalis)

22.

I love being a writer, what I can't stand is the paperwork.

Vries, Peter De

23.

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

Boileau, Nicholas

24.

If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don't listen to writers talking about writing or themselves.

Hellman, Lillian

25.

Whiskey has killed more men than bullets, but most men would rather be full of whiskey than bullets. What I like in a good author is not what he says, but what he whispers.

Smith, Logan Pearsall

26.

The creations of a great writer are little more than the moods and passions of his own heart, given surnames and Christian names, and sent to walk the earth.

Yeats, William Butler

27.

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

28.

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

Doren, Carl Van

29.

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

30.

I know not, Madam, that you have a right, upon moral principles, to make your readers suffer so much.

Johnson, Samuel

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.

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

33.

Ultimately, literature is nothing but carpentry. With both you are working with reality, a material just as hard as wood.

Marquez, Gabriel Garcia

34.

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

35.

Although most of us know Vincent van Gogh in Arles and Paul Gauguin in Tahiti as if they were neighbors -- somewhat disreputable but endlessly fascinating -- none of us can name two French generals or department store owners of that period. I take enormous pride in considering myself an artist, one of the necessaries.

Michener, James A.

36.

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

Swift, Jonathan

37.

If any man wishes to write a clear style, let him first be clear in his thoughts.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

38.

Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing.

Mailer, Norman

39.

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

Twain, Mark

40.

If you want to be a writer-stop talking about it and sit down and write!

Collins, Jackie

41.

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

42.

Often I think writing is a sheer paring away of oneself leaving always something thinner, barer, more meager.

43.

Writing is a craft not an art.

Zinsser, William

44.

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

Steinbeck, John

45.

To write is a humiliation.

Dahlberg, Edward

46.

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

Marquis, Don

47.

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

Smith, Logan Pearsall

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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