Motivational Quotes

Writers and writing

An author who speaks about his own books is almost as bad as a mother who talks about her own children.

- Disraeli, Benjamin

Best Quotes about Writers and writing

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

Lawrence, D. H.

The writer's only responsibility is to his art. He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one. He has a dream. Everything goes by the board: honor, pride, decency, security, happiness, all, to get the book written. If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the Ode on a Grecian Urn is worth any number of old ladies.

Faulkner, William

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.

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

Rushdie, Salman

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

Wilde, Oscar

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

Writers like teeth are divided into incisors and grinders.

Bagehot, Walter

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

Singer, Isaac Bashevis

No pen, no ink, no table, no room, no time, no quiet, no inclination.

Joyce, James

10.

The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and about all time.

Shaw, George Bernard

11.

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

12.

The characteristic of Chaucer is intensity: of Spencer, remoteness: of Milton elevation and of Shakespeare everything.

Hazlitt, William

13.

Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer's loneliness, but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.

Hemingway, Ernest

14.

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.

Franklin, Benjamin

15.

No doubt I shall go on writing, stumbling across tundras of unmeaning, planting words like bloody flags in my wake. Loose ends, things unrelated, shifts, nightmare journeys, cities arrived at and left, meetings, desertions, betrayals, all manner of unions, adulteries, triumphs, defeats... these are the facts.

Trocchi, Alexander

16.

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

17.

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

18.

All writers are vain, selfish and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives lies a mystery. Writing a book is a long, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.

Orwell, George

19.

You enter a state of controlled passivity, you relax your grip and accept that even if your declared intention is to justify the ways of God to man, you might end up interesting your readers rather more in Satan.

Mcewan, Ian

20.

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

21.

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, as those move easiest who have learned to dance. 'Tis not enough no harshness gives offence. The sound must seem an echo to the sense.

Pope, Alexander

22.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

23.

A writer is a person who has solutions for which there are no riddles.

Nunn, Gregory

24.

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

Pound, Ezra

25.

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

Pascal, Blaise

26.

Writing is thinking on paper.

Zinsser, William

27.

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

Nicolson, Harold

28.

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

Hellman, Lillian

29.

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

30.

Every writing career starts as a personal quest for sainthood, for self-betterment. Sooner or later, and as a rule quite soon, a man discovers that his pen accomplishes a lot more than his soul.

Brodsky, Joseph

31.

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

32.

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

Anderson, Margaret

33.

The ambivalence of writing is such that it can be considered both an act and an interpretive process that follows after an act with which it cannot coincide. As such, it both affirms and denies its own nature.

Man, Paul De

34.

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

Orwell, George

35.

To write is a humiliation.

Dahlberg, Edward

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

Byron, Lord

40.

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

Vries, Peter De

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

44.

Let authors write for glory and reward. The truth is well paid when she is sung and heard.

Corbett, James J.

45.

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

Steinem, Gloria

46.

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

Bach, Richard

47.

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

Nabokov, Vladimir

48.

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

Fadiman, Clifton

49.

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

Shaw, Irwin

50.

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