Motivational Quotes

Writers and writing

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

Best Quotes about Writers and writing

Any writer, I suppose, feels that the world into which he was born is nothing less than a conspiracy against the cultivation of his talent.

Baldwin, James

If you describe things as better than they are, you are considered to be a romantic; if you describe things as worse than they are, you will be called a realist; and if you describe things exactly as they are, you will be thought of as a satirist.

Crisp, Quentin

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

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

Faulkner, William

I would love to spend all my time writing to you; I'd love to share with you all that goes through my mind, all that weighs on my heart, all that gives air to my soul; phantoms of art, dreams that would be so beautiful if they could come true.

Pirandello, Luigi

Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing.

Mailer, Norman

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

Pound, Ezra

A man writes to throw off the poison which he has accumulated because of his false way of life. He is trying to recapture his innocence, yet all he succeeds in doing (by writing) is to inoculate the world with a virus of his disillusionment. No man would set a word down on paper if he had the courage to live out what he believed in.

Miller, Henry

Books choose their authors; the act of creation is not entirely a rational and conscious one.

Rushdie, Salman

10.

Writing is thinking on paper.

Zinsser, William

11.

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

12.

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

Lawrence, D. H.

13.

I can write better than anybody who can write faster, and I can write faster than anybody who can write better.

Liebling, A. J.

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.

In a sense the world dies every time a writer dies, because, if he is any good, he has been a wet nurse to humanity during his entire existence and has held earth close around him, like the little obstetrical toad that goes about with a cluster of eggs attached to his legs.

White, Elwyn Brooks

16.

Good writing is clear thinking made visible.

Wheeler, Bill

17.

Writing is the continuation of politics by other means.

Sollers, Philippe

18.

Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence.

Walker, Alice

19.

To be a good diarist, one must have a snouty, sneaky mind.

Nicolson, Harold

20.

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

Pascal, Blaise

21.

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

22.

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

Hemingway, Ernest

23.

What has a writer to be bombastic about? Whatever good a man may write is the consequence of accident, luck, or surprise, and nobody is more surprised than an honest writer when he makes a good phrase or says something truthful.

Dahlberg, Edward

24.

If you wish to be a writer; write!

Epictetus

25.

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

Fadiman, Clifton

26.

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

Rice, Anne

27.

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

28.

No poet or novelist wishes he were the only one who ever lived, but most of them wish they were the only one alive, and quite a number fondly believe their wish has been granted.

Auden, W. H.

29.

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

White, Elwyn Brooks

30.

Churchill, Winston

31.

Writing is turning one's worst moments into money.

Donleavy, J. P.

32.

I believe that it is my job not only to write books but to have them published. A book is like a child. You have to defend the life of a child.

Konrad, George

33.

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

34.

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

35.

The writer isn't made in a vacuum. Writers are witnesses. The reason we need writers is because we need witnesses to this terrifying century.

Doctorow, E. L.

36.

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

37.

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

Smith, Dr. Walter

38.

Good writing excites me, and makes life worth living.

Pinter, Harold

39.

His style is chaos illumined by flashes of lightning. As a writer he has mastered everything except language.

Wilde, Oscar

40.

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

Benchley, Robert

41.

Whores and writers, Mahound. We are the people you can't forgive.

Rushdie, Salman

42.

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

Burgess, Anthony

43.

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

Smith, Logan Pearsall

44.

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

Marquez, Gabriel Garcia

45.

The task of an American writer is not to describe the misgivings of a woman taken in adultery as she looks out of a window at the rain but to describe four hundred people under the lights reaching for a foul ball. This is ceremony.

Cheever, John

46.

Writing a novel without being asked seems a bit like having a baby when you have nowhere to live.

Ellman, Lucy

47.

Herman Melville was as separated from a civilized literature as the lost Atlantis was said to have been from the great peoples of the earth.

Dahlberg, Edward

48.

A good writer is basically a story teller, not a scholar or a redeemer of mankind.

Singer, Isaac Bashevis

49.

Analogies, it is true, decide nothing, but they can make one feel more at home.

Freud, Sigmund

50.

Every human being has hundreds of separate people living under his skin. The talent of a writer is his ability to give them their separate names, identities, personalities and have them relate to other characters living with him.

Brooks, Mel