Motivational Quotes

Writers and writing

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

- Burgess, Anthony

Best Quotes about Writers and writing

Writing is thinking on paper.

Zinsser, William

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

Ellman, Lucy

I never know what I think about something until I read what I've written on it.

Faulkner, William

Of course I'm a black writer. I'm not just a black writer, but categories like black writer, woman writer and Latin American writer aren't marginal anymore. We have to acknowledge that the thing we call literature is more pluralistic now, just as society ought to be. The melting pot never worked. We ought to be able to accept on equal terms everybody from the Hasidim to Walter Lippmann, from the Rastafarians to Ralph Bunche.

Morrison, Toni

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

Joyce, James

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

Kraus, Karl

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

Pound, Ezra

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

Rice, Anne

It's hard enough to write a good drama, it's much harder to write a good comedy, and it's hardest of all to write a drama with comedy. Which is what life is.

Lemmon, Jack

10.

I can write better than anybody who can write faster, and I can write faster than anybody who can write better.

Liebling, A. J.

11.

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

12.

The only way out is the way through, just as you cannot escape from death except by dying. Being unable to write, you must examine in writing this being unable, which becomes for the present -- henceforth? -- the subject to which you are condemned.

Nemerov, Howard

13.

The writer is more concerned to know than to judge.

Maugham, W. Somerset

14.

A book should be luminous not voluminous.

Bovee, Christian Nevell

15.

Every writer is a narcissist. This does not mean that he is vain; it only means that he is hopelessly self-absorbed.

Rosten, Leo

16.

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

Bowen, Catherine Drinker

17.

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

Landor, Walter Savage

18.

The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and about all time.

Shaw, George Bernard

19.

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

Corbett, James J.

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.

Good writing excites me, and makes life worth living.

Pinter, Harold

22.

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

Nicolson, Harold

23.

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

Rushdie, Salman

24.

The only phenomenon with which writing has always been concomitant is the creation of cities and empires, that is the integration of large numbers of individuals into a political system, and their grading into castes or classes. It seems to have favored the exploitation of human beings rather than their enlightenment.

Levi-Strauss, Claude

25.

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

James, William

26.

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

27.

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

28.

Like stones, words are laborious and unforgiving, and the fitting of them together, like the fitting of stones, demands great patience and strength of purpose and particular skill.

Morrison, Edmund

29.

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

30.

Writing is turning one's worst moments into money.

Donleavy, J. P.

31.

The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof, shit detector. This is the writer's radar and all great writers have had it.

Hemingway, Ernest

32.

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

Murdoch, Iris

33.

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.

34.

A writer and nothing else; a man alone in a room with the English language, trying to get human feelings right.

Hutchens, John K.

35.

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

Vorse, Mary Heaton

36.

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

Zinsser, William

37.

A writer writes not because he is educated but because he is driven by the need to communicate. Behind the need to communicate is the need to share. Behind the need to share is the need to be understood. The writer wants to be understood much more than he wants to be respected or praised or even loved. And that perhaps, is what makes him different from others.

Rosten, Leo

38.

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

39.

Writing is a question of finding a certain rhythm. I compare it to the rhythms of jazz. Much of the time life is a sort of rhythmic progression of three characters. If one tells oneself that life is like that, one feels it less arbitrary.

Sagan, Francoise

40.

Easy writings curse is hard reading.

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley

41.

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

Steinbeck, John

42.

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

43.

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

Doren, Carl Van

44.

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

45.

All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.

46.

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

47.

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

48.

A good writer is basically a story teller, not a scholar or a redeemer of mankind.

Singer, Isaac Bashevis

49.

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

Hellman, Lillian

50.

I believe that it is my job not only to write books but to have them published. A book is like a child. You have to defend the life of a child.