Motivational Quotes

Writers and writing

Every human being has hundreds of separate people living under his skin. The talent of a writer is his ability to give them their separate names, identities, personalities and have them relate to other characters living with him.

- Brooks, Mel

Best Quotes about Writers and writing

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

Clutter is the disease of American writing. We are a society strangling in unnecessary words, circular constructions, pompous frills and meaningless jargon.

Zinsser, William

Like all writers, he measured the achievements of others by what they had accomplished, asking of them that they measure him by what he envisaged or planned.

Borges, Jorge Luis

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

Vorse, Mary Heaton

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

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

Writers are always selling somebody out.

Didion, Joan

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

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

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.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

12.

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

Joyce, James

13.

Creative writers are always greater than the causes that they represent.

Forster, Edward M.

14.

A book should be luminous not voluminous.

Bovee, Christian Nevell

15.

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

Corbett, James J.

16.

Good writers are those who keep the language efficient. That is to say, keep it accurate, keep it clear.

Pound, Ezra

17.

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

Kraus, Karl

18.

Books choose their authors; the act of creation is not entirely a rational and conscious one.

Rushdie, Salman

19.

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

Auden, W. H.

20.

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

Sontag, Susan

21.

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

Hemingway, Ernest

22.

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

Churchill, Charles

23.

I was brought up in the great tradition of the late nineteenth century: that a writer never complains, never explains and never disdains.

Michener, James A.

24.

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

Dahlberg, Edward

25.

I am always interested in why young people become writers, and from talking with many I have concluded that most do not want to be writers working eight and ten hours a day and accomplishing little; they want to have been writers, garnering the rewards of having completed a best-seller. They aspire to the rewards of writing but not to the travail.

Michener, James A.

26.

Good authors, too, who once knew better words now only use four-letter words writing prose... anything goes.

Porter, Cole

27.

Nothing written for pay is worth printing. Only what has been written against the market.

Pound, Ezra

28.

Brooks, Mel

29.

There are hardly half a dozen writers in England today who have not sold out to the enemy. Even when their good work has been a success, Mammon grips them and whispers: More money for more work.

Crowley, Aleister

30.

The first thing an unpublished author should remember is that no one asked him to write in the first place. With this firmly in mind, he has no right to become discouraged just because other people are being published.

Farrar, John

31.

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

Lawrence, D. H.

32.

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

Wilde, Oscar

33.

The writer is more concerned to know than to judge.

Maugham, W. Somerset

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.

The role of the writer is not simply to arrange Being according to his own lights; he must also serve as a medium to Being and remain open to its often unfathomable dictates. This is the only way the work can transcend its creator and radiate its meaning further than the author himself can see or perceive.

Havel, Vaclav

37.

The writer's language is to some degree the product of his own action; he is both the historian and the agent of his own language.

Man, Paul De

38.

Essential characteristic of the really great novelist: a Christ-like, all-embracing compassion.

Bennett, Arnold

39.

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

Steinbeck, John

40.

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

Swift, Jonathan

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.

To be a good diarist, one must have a snouty, sneaky mind.

Nicolson, Harold

43.

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

Handke, Peter

44.

What an occupation! To sit and flay your fellow men and then offer their skins for sale and expect them to buy them.

Strindberg, J. August

45.

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.