Motivational Quotes

Writers and writing

To withdraw myself from myself has ever been my sole, my entire, my sincere motive in scribbling at all.

- Byron, Lord

Best Quotes about Writers and writing

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

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

Twain, Mark

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

There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.

Hemingway, Ernest

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

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

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

Rosten, Leo

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

Faulkner, William

Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them.

O'Connor, Flannery

10.

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

Rice, Anne

11.

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

Hemingway, Ernest

12.

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

13.

You don't write because you want to say something; you write because you've got something to say.

14.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

15.

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

16.

It is rarely that you see an American writer who is not hopelessly sane.

Anderson, Margaret

17.

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

18.

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

Faulkner, William

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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.

22.

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

Pascal, Blaise

23.

The secret of all good writing is sound judgment.

Horace

24.

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

Lewis, Cecil Day

25.

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

26.

Writing is not like painting where you add. It is not what you put on the canvas that the reader sees. Writing is more like a sculpture where you remove, you eliminate in order to make the work visible. Even those pages you remove somehow remain.

Wiesel, Elie

27.

Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don't feel I should be doing something else.

Steinem, Gloria

28.

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

29.

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.

30.

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

31.

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

Hemingway, Ernest

32.

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

33.

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

34.

Of the creative spirits that flourished in Concord, Massachusetts, during the middle of the nineteenth century, it might be said that Hawthorne loved men but felt estranged from them, Emerson loved ideas even more than men, and Thoreau loved himself.

Edel, Leon

35.

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

36.

Writers like teeth are divided into incisors and grinders.

Bagehot, Walter

37.

In most cases a favorite writer is more with us in his book than he ever could have been in the flesh; since, being a writer, he is one who has studied and perfected this particular mode of personal incarnation, very likely to the detriment of any other. I should like as a matter of curiosity to see and hear for a moment the men whose works I admire; but I should hardly expect to find further intercourse particularly profitable.

Cooley, Charles Horton

38.

Good writing excites me, and makes life worth living.

Pinter, Harold

39.

A writer is a person who has solutions for which there are no riddles.

Nunn, Gregory

40.

A book should be luminous not voluminous.

Bovee, Christian Nevell

41.

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.

42.

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

Bowen, Catherine Drinker

43.

It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up, because by that time I was too famous.

Benchley, Robert

44.

The more books we read, the clearer it becomes that the true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece and that no other task is of any consequence.

Connolly, Cyril

45.

Every writer hopes or boldly assumes that his life is in some sense exemplary, that the particular will turn out to be universal.

Amis, Martin

46.

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.

Franklin, Benjamin

47.

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

Corbett, James J.

48.

The trade of authorship is a violent, and indestructible obsession.