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

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

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

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

Burgess, Anthony

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

Bennett, Arnold

Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence.

Walker, Alice

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

Dahlberg, Edward

Writers are always selling somebody out.

Didion, Joan

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

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

10.

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

11.

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

Murdoch, Iris

12.

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

Vries, Peter De

13.

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

Woolf, Virginia

14.

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

15.

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

Steinem, Gloria

16.

The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.

Vorse, Mary Heaton

17.

What no wife of a writer can ever understand is that a writer is working when he's staring out of the window.

Rascoe, Burton

18.

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

Hemingway, Ernest

19.

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.

Franklin, Benjamin

20.

He is outside of everything, and alien everywhere. He is an aesthetic solitary. His beautiful, light imagination is the wing that on the autumn evening just brushes the dusky window.

James, Henry

21.

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

22.

Writing is the continuation of politics by other means.

Sollers, Philippe

23.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

24.

Whiskey has killed more men than bullets, but most men would rather be full of whiskey than bullets. What I like in a good author is not what he says, but what he whispers.

Smith, Logan Pearsall

25.

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.

26.

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

27.

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

Zinsser, William

28.

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

Marquez, Gabriel Garcia

29.

Most bad books get that way because their authors are engaged in trying to justify themselves. If a vain author is an alcoholic, then the most sympathetically portrayed character in his book will be an alcoholic. This sort of thing is very boring for outsiders.

Vizinczey, Stephen

30.

To write is a humiliation.

Dahlberg, Edward

31.

There are hardly half a dozen writers in England today who have not sold out to the enemy. Even when their good work has been a success, Mammon grips them and whispers: More money for more work.

Crowley, Aleister

32.

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

33.

The trade of authorship is a violent, and indestructible obsession.

Sand, George

34.

I cringe when critics say I'm a master of the popular novel. What's an unpopular novel?

Shaw, Irwin

35.

I am always interested in why young people become writers, and from talking with many I have concluded that most do not want to be writers working eight and ten hours a day and accomplishing little; they want to have been writers, garnering the rewards of having completed a best-seller. They aspire to the rewards of writing but not to the travail.

Michener, James A.

36.

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

Ferber, Edna

37.

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.

38.

Easy writings curse is hard reading.

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley

39.

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

40.

As to the adjective, when in doubt strike it out.

Twain, Mark

41.

Writing is turning one's worst moments into money.

Donleavy, J. P.

42.

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

Nabokov, Vladimir

43.

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

44.

Writing is a craft not an art.

Zinsser, William

45.

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

46.

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

47.

Writers like teeth are divided into incisors and grinders.

Bagehot, Walter

48.

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

Canetti, Elias

49.

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

Wilde, Oscar

50.

Agatha Christie has given more pleasure in bed than any other woman.