Motivational Quotes

Writers and writing

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

Best Quotes about Writers and writing

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

The trouble with young writers is that they are all in their sixties.

Maugham, W. Somerset

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

Sontag, Susan

Writing is not like painting where you add. It is not what you put on the canvas that the reader sees. Writing is more like a sculpture where you remove, you eliminate in order to make the work visible. Even those pages you remove somehow remain.

Wiesel, Elie

If you wish to be a writer; write!

Epictetus

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

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

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

Smith, Dr. Walter

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

Lewis, Cecil Day

10.

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

Collins, Jackie

11.

I know not, Madam, that you have a right, upon moral principles, to make your readers suffer so much.

Johnson, Samuel

12.

Practically everybody in New York has half a mind to write a book, and does.

Marx, Groucho

13.

Good writing excites me, and makes life worth living.

Pinter, Harold

14.

The need to express oneself in writing springs from a mal-adjustment to life, or from an inner conflict which the adolescent (or the grown man) cannot resolve in action. Those to whom action comes as easily as breathing rarely feel the need to break loose from the real, to rise above, and describe it... I do not mean that it is enough to be maladjusted to become a great writer, but writing is, for some, a method of resolving a conflict, provided they have the necessary talent.

Maurois, Andre

15.

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

16.

Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings so that you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for.

Socrates

17.

The writer's language is to some degree the product of his own action; he is both the historian and the agent of his own language.

Man, Paul De

18.

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

Pound, Ezra

19.

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

Liebling, A. J.

20.

A book should be luminous not voluminous.

Bovee, Christian Nevell

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.

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

23.

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

Landor, Walter Savage

24.

To write is to make oneself the echo of what cannot cease speaking -- and since it cannot, in order to become its echo I have, in a way, to silence it. I bring to this incessant speech the decisiveness, the authority of my own silence.

Blanchot, Maurice

25.

You expect far too much of a first sentence. Think of it as analogous to a good country breakfast: what we want is something simple, but nourishing to the imagination. Hold the philosophy, hold the adjectives, just give us a plain subject and verb and perhaps a wholesome, nonfattening adverb or two.

Mcmurtry, Larry

26.

If I had not existed, someone else would have written me, Hemingway, Dostoevski, all of us.

Faulkner, William

27.

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

Kesey, Ken

28.

I was brought up in the great tradition of the late nineteenth century: that a writer never complains, never explains and never disdains.

Michener, James A.

29.

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

Anderson, Margaret

30.

He who cannot limit himself will never know how to write.

Boileau, Nicholas

31.

The last thing we decide in writing a book is what to put first.

Pascal, Blaise

32.

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

33.

The future author is one who discovers that language, the exploration and manipulation of the resources of language, will serve him in winning through to his way.

Wilder, Thornton

34.

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

Freud, Sigmund

35.

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

Doren, Carl Van

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

White, Elwyn Brooks

39.

To withdraw myself from myself has ever been my sole, my entire, my sincere motive in scribbling at all.

Byron, Lord

40.

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

Gribbon, George

41.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

42.

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

Bach, Richard

43.

Great writers are the saints for the godless.

Brookner, Anita

44.

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

Hemingway, Ernest

45.

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

Ellman, Lucy

46.

Only amateurs say that they write for their own amusement. Writing is not an amusing occupation. It is a combination of ditch-digging, mountain-climbing, treadmill and childbirth. Writing may be interesting, absorbing, exhilarating, racking, relieving. But amusing? Never!

Ferber, Edna

47.

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

Churchill, Charles

48.

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

Bennett, Arnold

49.

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

50.

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