Motivational Quotes

Writers and writing

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

- Fadiman, Clifton

Best Quotes about Writers and writing

Writers are always selling somebody out.

Didion, Joan

Writing is the continuation of politics by other means.

Sollers, Philippe

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

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

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

Lawrence, D. H.

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

The free-lance writer is a man who is paid per piece or per word or perhaps.

Benchley, Robert

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

Steinbeck, John

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

Gribbon, George

10.

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

Smith, Nancy Banks

11.

The writer who loses his self-doubt, who gives way as he grows old to a sudden euphoria, to prolixity, should stop writing immediately: the time has come for him to lay aside his pen.

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle

12.

The role of the writer is not simply to arrange Being according to his own lights; he must also serve as a medium to Being and remain open to its often unfathomable dictates. This is the only way the work can transcend its creator and radiate its meaning further than the author himself can see or perceive.

Havel, Vaclav

13.

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

14.

Writers like teeth are divided into incisors and grinders.

Bagehot, Walter

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

Ellman, Lucy

19.

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

Marquez, Gabriel Garcia

20.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

21.

If the doctor told me I had six minutes to live, I'd type a little faster.

Asimov, Isaac

22.

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

Woolf, Virginia

23.

Writing is the hardest way of earning a living, with the possible exception of wrestling alligators.

Miller, Olin

24.

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

25.

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

Faulkner, William

26.

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

Kesey, Ken

27.

The writer must write what he has to say, not speak it.

Hemingway, Ernest

28.

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

Nunn, Gregory

29.

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

Thurber, James

30.

To endow the writer publicly with a good fleshly body, to reveal that he likes dry white wine and underdone steak, is to make even more miraculous for me, and of a more divine essence, the products of his art. Far from the details of his daily life bringing nearer to me the nature of his inspiration and making it clearer, it is the whole mystical singularity of his condition which the writer emphasizes by such confidences. For I cannot but ascribe to some superhumanly the existence of beings vast enough to wear blue pajamas at the very moment when they manifest themselves as universal conscience.

Barthes, Roland

31.

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

32.

Fundamentally, all writing is about the same thing; it's about dying, about the brief flicker of time we have here, and the frustration that it creates.

Richler, Mordecai

33.

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

34.

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

35.

Manuscript: something submitted in haste and returned at leisure.

Herford, Oliver

36.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

37.

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

Marquis, Don

38.

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

Nabokov, Vladimir

39.

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

White, Elwyn Brooks

40.

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

Ferber, Edna

41.

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

42.

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.

43.

If you wish to be a writer; write!

Epictetus

44.

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

45.

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

46.

Good writing is clear thinking made visible.

Wheeler, Bill

47.

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

Marx, Groucho

48.

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

49.

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.

50.

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