Motivational Quotes

Writers and writing

The only living works are those which have drained much of the author's own life into them.

- Butler, Samuel

Best Quotes about Writers and writing

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

It is excellent discipline for an author to feel that he must say all that he has to say in the fewest possible words, or his readers is sure to skip them.

Ruskin, John

The moving finger writes, and having written moves on. Nor all thy piety nor all thy wit, can cancel half a line of it.

Khayyam, Omar

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

Johnson, Samuel

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

Smith, Dr. Walter

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

Pound, Ezra

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

Writing is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, then it becomes a master, then it becomes a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster and fling him to the public.

Churchill, Winston

A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit.

Bach, Richard

10.

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

Landor, Walter Savage

11.

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

12.

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

Doren, Carl Van

13.

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

14.

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.

15.

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

Hemingway, Ernest

16.

I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismograph.

Kesey, Ken

17.

Every writer creates his own precursors. His work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify the future.

Borges, Jorge Luis

18.

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

19.

Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings so that you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for.

Socrates

20.

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

21.

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

22.

Agatha Christie has given more pleasure in bed than any other woman.

Smith, Nancy Banks

23.

You expect far too much of a first sentence. Think of it as analogous to a good country breakfast: what we want is something simple, but nourishing to the imagination. Hold the philosophy, hold the adjectives, just give us a plain subject and verb and perhaps a wholesome, nonfattening adverb or two.

Mcmurtry, Larry

24.

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

25.

Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer's loneliness, but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.

Hemingway, Ernest

26.

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

27.

Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar.

White, Elwyn Brooks

28.

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

29.

Only amateurs say that they write for their own amusement. Writing is not an amusing occupation. It is a combination of ditch-digging, mountain-climbing, treadmill and childbirth. Writing may be interesting, absorbing, exhilarating, racking, relieving. But amusing? Never!

Ferber, Edna

30.

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

Auden, W. H.

31.

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

32.

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

33.

The shelf life of the modern hardback writer is somewhere between the milk and the yogurt.

Mortimer, John

34.

It requires more than mere genius to be an author.

La Bruyere, Jean De

35.

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

36.

Writing is the continuation of politics by other means.

Sollers, Philippe

37.

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

38.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

39.

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

Corbett, James J.

40.

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

Rosten, Leo

41.

There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately no one knows what they are.

Maugham, W. Somerset

42.

I was in a queer mood, thinking myself very old: but now I am a woman again -- as I always am when I write.

Woolf, Virginia

43.

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

Pascal, Blaise

44.

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

45.

Writing is turning one's worst moments into money.

Donleavy, J. P.

46.

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

47.

Really, in the end, the only thing that can make you a writer is the person that you are, the intensity of your feeling, the honesty of your vision, the unsentimental acknowledgment of the endless interest of the life around and within you. Virtually nobody can help you deliberately-many people will help you unintentionally.

Rau, Santha Rama

48.

Good writing excites me, and makes life worth living.

Pinter, Harold

49.

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

James, William

50.

Writing isn't hard. It isn't any harder than ditch-digging.

Dennis, Patrick