Motivational Quotes

Writers and writing

Analogies, it is true, decide nothing, but they can make one feel more at home.

- Freud, Sigmund

Best Quotes about Writers and writing

Writing is turning one's worst moments into money.

Donleavy, J. P.

Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing.

Mailer, Norman

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

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

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

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

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

Vries, Peter De

Good writing is clear thinking made visible.

Wheeler, Bill

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

James, William

10.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

11.

Manuscript: something submitted in haste and returned at leisure.

Herford, Oliver

12.

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

13.

Any man who can write a page of living prose adds something to our life, and the man who can, as I can, is surely the last to resent someone who can do it even better. An artist cannot deny art, nor would he want to. A lover cannot deny love.

Chandler, Raymond

14.

It is excellent discipline for an author to feel that he must say all that he has to say in the fewest possible words, or his readers is sure to skip them.

Ruskin, John

15.

Books choose their authors; the act of creation is not entirely a rational and conscious one.

Rushdie, Salman

16.

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

17.

The only way out is the way through, just as you cannot escape from death except by dying. Being unable to write, you must examine in writing this being unable, which becomes for the present -- henceforth? -- the subject to which you are condemned.

Nemerov, Howard

18.

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

Landor, Walter Savage

19.

A book should be luminous not voluminous.

Bovee, Christian Nevell

20.

There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.

Hemingway, Ernest

21.

I hate the actor and audience business. An author should be in among the crowd, kicking their shins or cheering them on to some mischief or merriment.

Lawrence, D. H.

22.

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

Bowen, Catherine Drinker

23.

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

Woolf, Virginia

24.

It requires more than mere genius to be an author.

La Bruyere, Jean De

25.

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

Doren, Carl Van

26.

Clutter is the disease of American writing. We are a society strangling in unnecessary words, circular constructions, pompous frills and meaningless jargon.

Zinsser, William

27.

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

Steinbeck, John

28.

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

Faulkner, William

29.

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

30.

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

Woolf, Virginia

31.

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

Pascal, Blaise

32.

Writing is conscience, scruple, and the farming of our ancestors.

Dahlberg, Edward

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

Liebling, A. J.

36.

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, as those move easiest who have learned to dance. 'Tis not enough no harshness gives offence. The sound must seem an echo to the sense.

Pope, Alexander

37.

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

Lawrence, D. H.

38.

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

Pound, Ezra

39.

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

40.

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

Russell, Bertrand

41.

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

Sontag, Susan

42.

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

Benchley, Robert

43.

The best emotions to write out of are anger and fear or dread. The least energizing emotion to write out of is admiration. It is very difficult to write out of because the basic feeling that goes with admiration is a passive contemplative mood.

Sontag, Susan

44.

The moving finger writes, and having written moves on. Nor all thy piety nor all thy wit, can cancel half a line of it.

Khayyam, Omar

45.

The writer probably knows what he meant when he wrote a book, but he should immediately forget what he meant when he's written it.

Golding, William

46.

My own experience has been that the tools I need for my trade are paper, tobacco, food, and a little whisky.

Faulkner, William

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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

Smith, Nancy Banks

50.

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