Motivational Quotes

Writers and writing

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

- Doren, Carl Van

Best Quotes about Writers and writing

I'm the kind of writer that people think other people are reading.

Naipaul, V. S.

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

Landor, Walter Savage

To write is a humiliation.

Dahlberg, Edward

Writing is a craft not an art.

Zinsser, William

I never think when I write. Nobody can do two things at the same time and do them well.

Marquis, Don

O Grub Street! how do I bemoan thee, whose graceless children scorn to own thee! . Yet thou hast greater cause to be ashamed of them, than they of thee.

Swift, Jonathan

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

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

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

10.

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

11.

Writing is thinking on paper.

Zinsser, William

12.

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

Gribbon, George

13.

It requires more than mere genius to be an author.

La Bruyere, Jean De

14.

Nothing written for pay is worth printing. Only what has been written against the market.

Pound, Ezra

15.

If you're going to write, don't pretend to write down. It's going to be the best you can do, and it's the fact that it's the best you can do that kills you.

Parker, Dorothy

16.

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

17.

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.

18.

Good novels are not written by orthodoxy-sniffers, nor by people who are conscience-stricken about their own orthodoxy. Good novels are written by people who are not frightened.

Orwell, George

19.

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

Steinbeck, John

20.

Some American writers who have known each other for years have never met in the daytime or when both were sober.

Thurber, James

21.

This is something that I cannot get over -- that a whole line could be written by half a man, that a work could be built on the quicksand of a character.

Kraus, Karl

22.

You must often make erasures if you mean to write what is worthy of being read a second time; and don't labor for the admiration of the crowd, but be content with a few choice readers.

Horace

23.

Writers aren't people exactly. Or, if they're any good, they're a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person. It's like actors, who try so pathetically not to look in mirrors. Who lean back ward trying -- only to see their faces in the reflecting chandeliers.

24.

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

Bach, Richard

25.

What you're trying to do when you write is to crowd the reader out of his own space and occupy it with yours, in a good cause. You're trying to take over his sensibility and deliver an experience that moves from mere information.

Stone, Robert

26.

The responsibility of a writer is to excavate the experience of the people who produced him.

Baldwin, James

27.

The task of an American writer is not to describe the misgivings of a woman taken in adultery as she looks out of a window at the rain but to describe four hundred people under the lights reaching for a foul ball. This is ceremony.

Cheever, John

28.

The only living works are those which have drained much of the author's own life into them.

Butler, Samuel

29.

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

30.

The writer is more concerned to know than to judge.

Maugham, W. Somerset

31.

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

Pound, Ezra

32.

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

33.

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

Vorse, Mary Heaton

34.

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.

35.

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

36.

If you wish to be a writer; write!

Epictetus

37.

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

Woolf, Virginia

38.

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

White, Elwyn Brooks

39.

For your born writer, nothing is so healing as the realization that he has come upon the right word.

Bowen, Catherine Drinker

40.

Let's face it, writing is hell.

Styron, William

41.

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

Corbett, James J.

42.

Writers like teeth are divided into incisors and grinders.

Bagehot, Walter

43.

A book should be luminous not voluminous.

Bovee, Christian Nevell

44.

You can fire your secretary, divorce your spouse, abandon your children. But they remain your co-authors forever.

Goodman, Ellen

45.

The profession of book writing makes horse racing seem like a solid, stable business.

Steinbeck, John

46.

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

47.

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

Lewis, Cecil Day

48.

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

49.

After all, most writing is done away from the typewriter, away from the desk. I'd say it occurs in the quiet, silent moments, while you're walking or shaving or playing a game, or whatever, or even talking to someone you're not vitally interested in.

Miller, Henry

50.

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