Motivational Quotes

Writers and writing

The first thing an unpublished author should remember is that no one asked him to write in the first place.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

Best Quotes about Writers and writing

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

Vries, Peter De

Good writing excites me, and makes life worth living.

Pinter, Harold

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

From the point of view of literature Mr. Kipling is a genius who drops his aspirates. From the point of view of life, he is a reporter who knows vulgarity better than any one has ever known it.

Wilde, Oscar

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

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

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

If you wish to be a writer; write!

Epictetus

A writer and nothing else; a man alone in a room with the English language, trying to get human feelings right.

Hutchens, John K.

10.

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

Shaw, Irwin

11.

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

Kesey, Ken

12.

Every writer hopes or boldly assumes that his life is in some sense exemplary, that the particular will turn out to be universal.

Amis, Martin

13.

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.

14.

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

Lewis, Cecil Day

15.

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

16.

The writer's language is to some degree the product of his own action; he is both the historian and the agent of his own language.

Man, Paul De

17.

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

Sontag, Susan

18.

The trouble with young writers is that they are all in their sixties.

Maugham, W. Somerset

19.

Writers like teeth are divided into incisors and grinders.

Bagehot, Walter

20.

Writing is simple. First you have to make sure you have plenty of paper... sharp pencils... typewriter ribbon. Then put your belly up to your desk... roll a sheet of paper into the typewriter... and stare at it until beads of blood appear on your forehead.

21.

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

22.

The creations of a great writer are little more than the moods and passions of his own heart, given surnames and Christian names, and sent to walk the earth.

Yeats, William Butler

23.

If I had not existed, someone else would have written me, Hemingway, Dostoevski, all of us.

Faulkner, William

24.

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

25.

Writers are a little below the clowns and a little above the trained seals.

Steinbeck, John

26.

The walls are the publishers of the poor.

Galeano, Eduardo

27.

To write is a humiliation.

Dahlberg, Edward

28.

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

Steinbeck, John

29.

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

Duncan, Isadora

30.

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

31.

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

Anderson, Margaret

32.

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

Hemingway, Ernest

33.

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

Handke, Peter

34.

Writing is the continuation of politics by other means.

Sollers, Philippe

35.

I know not, Madam, that you have a right, upon moral principles, to make your readers suffer so much.

Johnson, Samuel

36.

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

Byron, Lord

37.

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

Marquis, Don

38.

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

Steinem, Gloria

39.

Writing crystallizes thought and thought produces action.

Meyer, Paul J.

40.

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

Nicolson, Harold

41.

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

Joyce, James

42.

You don't write because you want to say something; you write because you've got something to say.

43.

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

Woolf, Virginia

44.

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

Gribbon, George

45.

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

Hellman, Lillian

46.

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

47.

Four basic premises of writing: clarity, brevity, simplicity, and humanity.

Zinsser, William

48.

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

Corbett, James J.

49.

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

50.

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