Motivational Quotes

Writers and writing

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

Best Quotes about Writers and writing

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

White, Elwyn Brooks

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

Thurber, James

The first thing an unpublished author should remember is that no one asked him to write in the first place. With this firmly in mind, he has no right to become discouraged just because other people are being published.

Farrar, John

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

The shelf life of the modern hardback writer is somewhere between the milk and the yogurt.

Mortimer, John

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

Wilde, Oscar

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

Doren, Carl Van

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

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

Butler, Samuel

10.

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

11.

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

Smith, Nancy Banks

12.

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

13.

Writing is more than anything a compulsion, like some people wash their hands thirty times a day for fear of awful consequences if they do not. It pays a whole lot better than this type of compulsion, but it is no more heroic.

Burchill, Julie

14.

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

15.

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

Joyce, James

16.

Really, in the end, the only thing that can make you a writer is the person that you are, the intensity of your feeling, the honesty of your vision, the unsentimental acknowledgment of the endless interest of the life around and within you. Virtually nobody can help you deliberately-many people will help you unintentionally.

Rau, Santha Rama

17.

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

Liebling, A. J.

18.

I don't regard Brecht as a man of iron-gray purpose and intellect, I think he is a theatrical whore of the first quality.

Hall, Sir Peter

19.

I never know what I think about something until I read what I've written on it.

Faulkner, William

20.

The first essential in writing about anything is that the writer should have no experience of the matter.

Duncan, Isadora

21.

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

22.

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

23.

Let's face it, writing is hell.

Styron, William

24.

Like all writers, he measured the achievements of others by what they had accomplished, asking of them that they measure him by what he envisaged or planned.

Borges, Jorge Luis

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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.

28.

When writers meet they are truculent, indifferent, or over-polite. Then comes the inevitable moment. A shows B that he has read something of B s. Will B show A? If not, then A hates B, if yes, then all is well. The only other way for writers to meet is to share a quick pee over a common lamp-post.

Connolly, Cyril

29.

There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately no one knows what they are.

Maugham, W. Somerset

30.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

31.

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

Twain, Mark

32.

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

33.

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

Bennett, Arnold

34.

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

35.

Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over.

Hemingway, Ernest

36.

Footnotes -- little dogs yapping at the heels of the text

James, William

37.

A writer is someone who can make a riddle out of an answer.

Kraus, Karl

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

Pascal, Blaise

42.

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

43.

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

Sontag, Susan

44.

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.

Franklin, Benjamin

45.

If a nation loses its storytellers, it loses its childhood.

Handke, Peter

46.

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

Bowen, Catherine Drinker

47.

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

48.

Manuscript: something submitted in haste and returned at leisure.

Herford, Oliver

49.

Good writing excites me, and makes life worth living.

Pinter, Harold

50.

Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence.

Walker, Alice