Motivational Quotes

Writers and writing

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

Best Quotes about Writers and writing

I am paid by the word, so I always write the shortest words possible.

Russell, Bertrand

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

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

Corbett, James J.

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

Faulkner, William

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

Naipaul, V. S.

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

Pound, Ezra

No poet or novelist wishes he were the only one who ever lived, but most of them wish they were the only one alive, and quite a number fondly believe their wish has been granted.

Auden, W. H.

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

Asimov, Isaac

Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about.

Auden, W. H.

10.

The walls are the publishers of the poor.

Galeano, Eduardo

11.

Although most of us know Vincent van Gogh in Arles and Paul Gauguin in Tahiti as if they were neighbors -- somewhat disreputable but endlessly fascinating -- none of us can name two French generals or department store owners of that period. I take enormous pride in considering myself an artist, one of the necessaries.

Michener, James A.

12.

Manuscript: something submitted in haste and returned at leisure.

Herford, Oliver

13.

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

14.

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

Anderson, Margaret

15.

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

16.

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

Duncan, Isadora

17.

It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by. How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment? for the moment passes, it is forgotten; the mood is gone; life itself is gone. That is where the writer scores over his fellows: he catches the changes of his mind on the hop. Growth is exciting; growth is dynamic and alarming. Growth of the soul, growth of the mind.

Sackville-West, Vita

18.

One reason writers write is out of revenge. Life hurts; certain ideas and experiences hurt; one wants to clarify, to set out illuminations, to replay the old bad scenes and get the Treppenworte said -- the words one didn't have the strength or ripeness to say when those words were necessary for one's dignity or survival.

Ozick, Cynthia

19.

To write something, you have to risk making a fool of yourself.

Rice, Anne

20.

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

21.

A book should be luminous not voluminous.

Bovee, Christian Nevell

22.

A writer writes not because he is educated but because he is driven by the need to communicate. Behind the need to communicate is the need to share. Behind the need to share is the need to be understood. The writer wants to be understood much more than he wants to be respected or praised or even loved. And that perhaps, is what makes him different from others.

Rosten, Leo

23.

Who often, but without success, have prayed for apt Alliteration's artful aid.

Churchill, Charles

24.

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

25.

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

Bach, Richard

26.

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

Bennett, Arnold

27.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

28.

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

Miller, Olin

29.

Writers, you know, are the beggars of Western society.

Paz, Octavio

30.

The trade of authorship is a violent, and indestructible obsession.

Sand, George

31.

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.

32.

The biggest obstacle to professional writing is the necessity for changing a typewriter ribbon.

Benchley, Robert

33.

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

Kesey, Ken

34.

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

Butler, Samuel

35.

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

Pascal, Blaise

36.

I think it's bad to talk about one's present work, for it spoils something at the root of the creative act. It discharges the tension.

Mailer, Norman

37.

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

38.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

39.

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

40.

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

Steinbeck, John

41.

I believe that it is my job not only to write books but to have them published. A book is like a child. You have to defend the life of a child.

Konrad, George

42.

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

Lawrence, D. H.

43.

Paper and ink are all but trash, if I cannot find the thought which the writer did think.

Smith, Dr. Walter

44.

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

45.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

46.

The secret of all good writing is sound judgment.

Horace

47.

Every writer is a narcissist. This does not mean that he is vain; it only means that he is hopelessly self-absorbed.

Rosten, Leo

48.

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.

49.

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

50.

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

Baldwin, James