Motivational Quotes

Writers and writing

Writing ought either to be the manufacture of stories for which there is a market demand -- a business as safe and commendable as making soap or breakfast foods -- or it should be an art, which is always a search for something for which there is no market demand, something new and untried, where the values are intrinsic and have nothing to do with standardized values.

- Cather, Willa

Best Quotes about Writers and writing

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

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

Mortimer, John

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

Twain, Mark

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

Doren, Carl Van

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

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

Anderson, Margaret

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

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

Bach, Richard

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

10.

The responsibility of a writer is to excavate the experience of the people who produced him.

Baldwin, James

11.

Writers are a little below the clowns and a little above the trained seals.

Steinbeck, John

12.

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

White, Elwyn Brooks

13.

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

Smith, Dr. Walter

14.

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

Forster, Edward M.

15.

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

16.

Mr. Faulkner, of course, is interested in making your mind rather than your flesh creep.

Fadiman, Clifton

17.

Let your literary compositions be kept from the public eye for nine years.

Horace

18.

For a creative writer possession of the truth is less important than emotional sincerity.

Orwell, George

19.

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

Russell, Bertrand

20.

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

Kesey, Ken

21.

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

22.

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

Butler, Samuel

23.

The biggest obstacle to professional writing is the necessity for changing a typewriter ribbon.

Benchley, Robert

24.

Ultimately, literature is nothing but carpentry. With both you are working with reality, a material just as hard as wood.

Marquez, Gabriel Garcia

25.

Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing.

Mailer, Norman

26.

He is outside of everything, and alien everywhere. He is an aesthetic solitary. His beautiful, light imagination is the wing that on the autumn evening just brushes the dusky window.

James, Henry

27.

Let's face it, writing is hell.

Styron, William

28.

If you want to be a writer-stop talking about it and sit down and write!

Collins, Jackie

29.

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

Lawrence, D. H.

30.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

31.

Life cannot defeat a writer who is in love with writing; for life itself is a writer's love until death.

Ferber, Edna

32.

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

Zinsser, William

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.

It requires more than mere genius to be an author.

La Bruyere, Jean De

35.

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

36.

Every writing career starts as a personal quest for sainthood, for self-betterment. Sooner or later, and as a rule quite soon, a man discovers that his pen accomplishes a lot more than his soul.

Brodsky, Joseph

37.

Writing is the continuation of politics by other means.

Sollers, Philippe

38.

Who wants to become a writer? And why? Because it's the answer to everything. To Why am I here? To uselessness. It's the streaming reason for living. To note, to pin down, to build up, to create, to be astonished at nothing, to cherish the oddities, to let nothing go down the drain, to make something, to make a great flower out of life, even if it's a cactus.

Bagnold, Enid

39.

Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over.

Hemingway, Ernest

40.

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

Burgess, Anthony

41.

If written directions alone would suffice, libraries wouldn't need to have the rest of the universities attached.

Martin, Judith

42.

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

43.

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

44.

My idea is always to reach my generation. The wise writer writes for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmasters of ever afterward.

45.

Hard writing makes easy reading. Easy writing makes hard reading.

Zinsser, William

46.

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

James, William

47.

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

48.

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.

49.

There is something about the literary life that repels me, all this desperate building of castles on cobwebs, the long-drawn acrimonious struggle to make something important which we all know will be gone forever in a few years, the miasma of failure which is to me almost as offensive as the cheap gaudiness of popular success.

Chandler, Raymond

50.

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