Motivational Quotes

Writers and writing

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

- Collins, Jackie

Best Quotes about Writers and writing

The cure for writers cramp is writer's block.

Leon, Inigo de

The creations of a great writer are little more than the moods and passions of his own heart, given surnames and Christian names, and sent to walk the earth.

Yeats, William Butler

It requires more than mere genius to be an author.

La Bruyere, Jean De

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

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

Dyer, Wayne

Style may defined as the proper words in the proper places.

Swift, Jonathan

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

Often I think writing is a sheer paring away of oneself leaving always something thinner, barer, more meager.

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

Lewis, Cecil Day

10.

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

Smith, Dr. Walter

11.

This morning I took out a comma and this afternoon I put it back in again.

Wilde, Oscar

12.

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.

13.

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

14.

Every writer creates his own precursors. His work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify the future.

Borges, Jorge Luis

15.

Writers seldom choose as friends those self-contained characters who are never in trouble, never unhappy or ill, never make mistakes, and always count their change when it is handed to them.

Bowen, Catherine Drinker

16.

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

17.

Writing is the incurable itch that possesses many.

Juvenal, (Decimus Junius Juvenalis)

18.

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.

19.

Writing is like getting married. One should never commit oneself until one is amazed at one's luck.

Murdoch, Iris

20.

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

21.

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

Orwell, George

22.

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

Hemingway, Ernest

23.

Let's face it, writing is hell.

Styron, William

24.

To write is a humiliation.

Dahlberg, Edward

25.

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

26.

Many writers who choose to be active in the world lose not virtue but time, and that stillness without which literature cannot be made.

Vidal, Gore

27.

They can't yank a novelist like they can a pitcher. A novelist has to go the full nine, even if it kills him.

Hemingway, Ernest

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.

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

Martin, Judith

30.

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

Wilde, Oscar

31.

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

Canetti, Elias

32.

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

33.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

34.

Writing crystallizes thought and thought produces action.

Meyer, Paul J.

35.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

36.

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

37.

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

Forster, Edward M.

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

Churchill, Charles

41.

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

42.

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

Smith, Logan Pearsall

43.

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

44.

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

Rice, Anne

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

48.

Manuscript: something submitted in haste and returned at leisure.

Herford, Oliver

49.

People want to know why I do this, why I write such gross stuff. I like to tell them that I have the heart of a small boy -- and I keep it in a jar on my desk.

King, Stephen

50.

If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don't listen to writers talking about writing or themselves.

Hellman, Lillian