Motivational Quotes

Writers and writing

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

- Churchill, Charles

Best Quotes about Writers and writing

He is a man of thirty-five, but looks fifty. He is bald, has varicose veins and wears spectacles, or would wear them if his only pair were not chronically lost. If things are normal with him, he will be suffering from malnutrition, but if he has recently had a lucky streak, he will be suffering from a hangover. At present it is half past eleven in the morning, and according to his schedule he should have started work two hours ago; but even if he had made any serious effort to start he would have been frustrated by the almost continuous ringing of the telephone bell, the yells of the baby, the rattle of an electric drill out in the street, and the heavy boots of his creditors clumping up the stairs. The most recent interruption was the arrival of the second post, which brought him two circulars and an income tax demand printed in red. Needless to say this person is a writer.

Orwell, George

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

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

The process of writing has something infinite about it. Even though it is interrupted each night, it is one single notation.

Canetti, Elias

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

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.

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

Steinbeck, John

Essential characteristic of the really great novelist: a Christ-like, all-embracing compassion.

Bennett, Arnold

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

Mortimer, John

10.

Some American writers who have known each other for years have never met in the daytime or when both were sober.

Thurber, James

11.

There is no luck in literary reputation. They who make up the final verdict upon every book are not the partial and noisy readers of the hour when it appears; but a court as of angels, a public not to be bribed, not to be entreated, and not to be overawed, decides upon every man's title to fame.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

12.

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

Pound, Ezra

13.

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

Lewis, Cecil Day

14.

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

Faulkner, William

15.

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

Rice, Anne

16.

What I like in a good author isn't what he says, but what he whispers.

Smith, Logan Pearsall

17.

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

Kesey, Ken

18.

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

Auden, W. H.

19.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

20.

A writer never reads his work. For him, it is the unreadable, a secret, and he cannot remain face to face with it. A secret, because he is separated from it.

Blanchot, Maurice

21.

I don't regard Brecht as a man of iron-gray purpose and intellect, I think he is a theatrical whore of the first quality.

Hall, Sir Peter

22.

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

Marquez, Gabriel Garcia

23.

Let's face it, writing is hell.

Styron, William

24.

I love being a writer, what I can't stand is the paperwork.

Vries, Peter De

25.

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

26.

Style and Structure are the essence of a book; great ideas are hogwash.

Nabokov, Vladimir

27.

The role of the writer is not simply to arrange Being according to his own lights; he must also serve as a medium to Being and remain open to its often unfathomable dictates. This is the only way the work can transcend its creator and radiate its meaning further than the author himself can see or perceive.

Havel, Vaclav

28.

I write in order to attain that feeling of tension relieved and function achieved which a cow enjoys on giving milk.

Mencken, H. L.

29.

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

30.

Habits in writing as in life are only useful if they are broken as soon as they cease to be advantageous.

Maugham, W. Somerset

31.

The writer is either a practicing recluse or a delinquent, guilt-ridden one; or both. Usually both.

Sontag, Susan

32.

The walls are the publishers of the poor.

Galeano, Eduardo

33.

After all, most writing is done away from the typewriter, away from the desk. I'd say it occurs in the quiet, silent moments, while you're walking or shaving or playing a game, or whatever, or even talking to someone you're not vitally interested in.

Miller, Henry

34.

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

Steinem, Gloria

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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

Paz, Octavio

38.

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

Hemingway, Ernest

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

Rosten, Leo

43.

Writers must fortify themselves with pride and egotism as best they can. The process is analogous to using sandbags and loose timbers to protect a house against flood. Writers are vulnerable creatures like anyone else. For what do they have in reality? Not sandbags, not timbers. Just a flimsy reputation and a name.

Aldiss, Brian

44.

How people treat you is their karma; how you react is yours.

Dyer, Wayne

45.

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

46.

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

Smith, Dr. Walter

47.

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

Orwell, George

48.

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

Corbett, James J.

49.

Writers are always selling somebody out.

Didion, Joan

50.

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