Motivational Quotes

Writers and writing

The walls are the publishers of the poor.

- Galeano, Eduardo

Best Quotes about Writers and writing

I was brought up in the great tradition of the late nineteenth century: that a writer never complains, never explains and never disdains.

Michener, James A.

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.

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

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

Gribbon, George

Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence.

Walker, Alice

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

Hemingway, Ernest

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

Wilde, Oscar

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

Handke, Peter

Good writing excites me, and makes life worth living.

Pinter, Harold

10.

Each writer is born with a repertory company in his head. Shakespeare has perhaps 20 players, and Tennessee Williams has about 5, and Samuel Beckett one -- and maybe a clone of that one. I have 10 or so, and that's a lot. As you get older, you become more skillful at casting them.

Vidal, Gore

11.

In a sense the world dies every time a writer dies, because, if he is any good, he has been a wet nurse to humanity during his entire existence and has held earth close around him, like the little obstetrical toad that goes about with a cluster of eggs attached to his legs.

White, Elwyn Brooks

12.

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

13.

Writing crystallizes thought and thought produces action.

Meyer, Paul J.

14.

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

15.

I think of an author as somebody who goes into the marketplace and puts down his rug and says, I will tell you a story, and then he passes the hat.

Davies, Robertson

16.

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

Faulkner, William

17.

Most bad books get that way because their authors are engaged in trying to justify themselves. If a vain author is an alcoholic, then the most sympathetically portrayed character in his book will be an alcoholic. This sort of thing is very boring for outsiders.

Vizinczey, Stephen

18.

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

Woolf, Virginia

19.

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

Steinbeck, John

20.

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

Smith, Dr. Walter

21.

Work on good prose has three steps: a musical stage when it is composed, an architectonic one when it is built, and a textile one when it is woven.

Benjamin, Walter

22.

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

Rice, Anne

23.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

24.

The writer isn't made in a vacuum. Writers are witnesses. The reason we need writers is because we need witnesses to this terrifying century.

Doctorow, E. L.

25.

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

Faulkner, William

26.

Writing is turning one's worst moments into money.

Donleavy, J. P.

27.

If you wish to be a writer; write!

Epictetus

28.

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

Benchley, Robert

29.

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.

30.

The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and about all time.

Shaw, George Bernard

31.

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

32.

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

33.

The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof, shit detector. This is the writer's radar and all great writers have had it.

Hemingway, Ernest

34.

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

Lawrence, D. H.

35.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

36.

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

37.

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

38.

Easy writings curse is hard reading.

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley

39.

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

40.

Writing is thinking on paper.

Zinsser, William

41.

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

42.

Let's face it, writing is hell.

Styron, William

43.

Writers must fortify themselves with pride and egotism as best they can. The process is analogous to using sandbags and loose timbers to protect a house against flood. Writers are vulnerable creatures like anyone else. For what do they have in reality? Not sandbags, not timbers. Just a flimsy reputation and a name.

Aldiss, Brian

44.

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

Naipaul, V. S.

45.

Whores and writers, Mahound. We are the people you can't forgive.

Rushdie, Salman

46.

Let your literary compositions be kept from the public eye for nine years.

Horace

47.

Manuscript: something submitted in haste and returned at leisure.

Herford, Oliver

48.

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

Vries, Peter De

49.

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.

50.

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

Nunn, Gregory