Motivational Quotes

Writers and writing

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

Best Quotes about Writers and writing

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

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

As a man has no right to kill one of his children if it is diseased or insane, so a man who has made the gradual and conscious expression of his personality in literature the aim of his life, has no right to suppress himself any carefully considered work which seemed good enough when it was written. Suppression, if it is deserved, will come rapidly enough from the same causes that suppress the unworthy members of a man's family.

Synge, J. M.

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

Forster, Edward M.

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

Martin, Judith

Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence.

Walker, Alice

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

Rushdie, Salman

Easy writings curse is hard reading.

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley

It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by. How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment? for the moment passes, it is forgotten; the mood is gone; life itself is gone. That is where the writer scores over his fellows: he catches the changes of his mind on the hop. Growth is exciting; growth is dynamic and alarming. Growth of the soul, growth of the mind.

Sackville-West, Vita

10.

Although most of us know Vincent van Gogh in Arles and Paul Gauguin in Tahiti as if they were neighbors -- somewhat disreputable but endlessly fascinating -- none of us can name two French generals or department store owners of that period. I take enormous pride in considering myself an artist, one of the necessaries.

Michener, James A.

11.

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

12.

Writing is to descend like a miner to the depths of the mine with a lamp on your forehead, a light whose dubious brightness falsifies everything, whose wick is in permanent danger of explosion, whose blinking illumination in the coal dust exhausts and corrodes your eyes.

Sauser, Blaise Cendrars

13.

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

Zinsser, William

14.

Writing is turning one's worst moments into money.

Donleavy, J. P.

15.

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

Steinbeck, John

16.

Any man who can write a page of living prose adds something to our life, and the man who can, as I can, is surely the last to resent someone who can do it even better. An artist cannot deny art, nor would he want to. A lover cannot deny love.

Chandler, Raymond

17.

Writing is the hardest way of earning a living, with the possible exception of wrestling alligators.

Miller, Olin

18.

A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.

Woolf, Virginia

19.

From the point of view of literature Mr. Kipling is a genius who drops his aspirates. From the point of view of life, he is a reporter who knows vulgarity better than any one has ever known it.

Wilde, Oscar

20.

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

21.

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

Pascal, Blaise

22.

The hard necessity of bringing the judge on the bench down into the dock has been the peculiar responsibility of the writer in all ages of man.

Algren, Nelson

23.

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

Pound, Ezra

24.

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

Rushdie, Salman

25.

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

Swift, Jonathan

26.

Fundamentally, all writing is about the same thing; it's about dying, about the brief flicker of time we have here, and the frustration that it creates.

Richler, Mordecai

27.

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

Hemingway, Ernest

28.

Writing crystallizes thought and thought produces action.

Meyer, Paul J.

29.

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

Ferber, Edna

30.

We are nauseated by the sight of trivial personalities decomposing in the eternity of print.

Woolf, Virginia

31.

What an occupation! To sit and flay your fellow men and then offer their skins for sale and expect them to buy them.

Strindberg, J. August

32.

Writing is conscience, scruple, and the farming of our ancestors.

Dahlberg, Edward

33.

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

Dyer, Wayne

34.

A writer should be a joyous optimist. Anything that implies rejection of life is wrong for a writer.

Gribbon, George

35.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

36.

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

37.

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.

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

Mencken, H. L.

42.

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

Hellman, Lillian

43.

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.

44.

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

Anderson, Margaret

45.

The writing of the wise are the only riches our posterity cannot squander.

Landor, Walter Savage

46.

It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up, because by that time I was too famous.

Benchley, Robert

47.

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

48.

Great writers are the saints for the godless.

Brookner, Anita

49.

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

50.

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