Motivational Quotes

Writers and writing

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

Best Quotes about Writers and writing

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

Lawrence, D. H.

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

Marquis, Don

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

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

Joyce, James

Great writers arrive among us like new diseases -- threatening, powerful, impatient for patients to pick up their virus, irresistible.

Raine, Craig

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

If the doctor told me I had six minutes to live, I'd type a little faster.

Asimov, Isaac

The cure for writers cramp is writer's block.

Leon, Inigo de

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

10.

When all things are equal, translucence in writing is more effective than transparency, just as glow is more revealing than glare.

Thurber, James

11.

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

Anderson, Margaret

12.

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

Doren, Carl Van

13.

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

Churchill, Charles

14.

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

15.

I think it's bad to talk about one's present work, for it spoils something at the root of the creative act. It discharges the tension.

Mailer, Norman

16.

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

Hemingway, Ernest

17.

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

18.

The free-lance writer is a man who is paid per piece or per word or perhaps.

Benchley, Robert

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

23.

I think of an author as somebody who goes into the marketplace and puts down his rug and says, I will tell you a story, and then he passes the hat.

Davies, Robertson

24.

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

Hemingway, Ernest

25.

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

26.

Good novels are not written by orthodoxy-sniffers, nor by people who are conscience-stricken about their own orthodoxy. Good novels are written by people who are not frightened.

Orwell, George

27.

Writing is thinking on paper.

Zinsser, William

28.

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

29.

Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence.

Walker, Alice

30.

I am paid by the word, so I always write the shortest words possible.

Russell, Bertrand

31.

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

Byron, Lord

32.

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

33.

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

34.

Writers, you know, are the beggars of Western society.

Paz, Octavio

35.

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

Porter, Cole

36.

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

Steinem, Gloria

37.

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

38.

Writers like teeth are divided into incisors and grinders.

Bagehot, Walter

39.

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

40.

The last thing we decide in writing a book is what to put first.

Pascal, Blaise

41.

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

42.

The walls are the publishers of the poor.

Galeano, Eduardo

43.

A book should be luminous not voluminous.

Bovee, Christian Nevell

44.

It requires more than mere genius to be an author.

La Bruyere, Jean De

45.

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

Faulkner, William

46.

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

47.

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

Pound, Ezra

48.

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

49.

Writing is the incurable itch that possesses many.

Juvenal, (Decimus Junius Juvenalis)

50.

Good writing excites me, and makes life worth living.

Pinter, Harold