Motivational Quotes

Writers and writing

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

Best Quotes about Writers and writing

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

If I don't write to empty my mind, I go mad. As to that regular, uninterrupted love of writing. I do not understand it. I feel it as a torture, which I must get rid of, but never as a pleasure. On the contrary, I think composition a great pain.

Byron, Lord

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.

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

Marquez, Gabriel Garcia

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

Nunn, Gregory

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

Asimov, Isaac

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

Vries, Peter De

Any writer, I suppose, feels that the world into which he was born is nothing less than a conspiracy against the cultivation of his talent.

Baldwin, James

If you want to be a writer-stop talking about it and sit down and write!

Collins, Jackie

10.

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

White, Elwyn Brooks

11.

Writing is turning one's worst moments into money.

Donleavy, J. P.

12.

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

James, William

13.

A word is a bud attempting to become a twig. How can one not dream while writing? It is the pen which dreams. The blank page gives the right to dream.

Bachelard, Gaston

14.

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

Steinbeck, John

15.

If you wish to be a writer; write!

Epictetus

16.

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

Smith, Nancy Banks

17.

I don't regard Brecht as a man of iron-gray purpose and intellect, I think he is a theatrical whore of the first quality.

Hall, Sir Peter

18.

Writing ought either to be the manufacture of stories for which there is a market demand -- a business as safe and commendable as making soap or breakfast foods -- or it should be an art, which is always a search for something for which there is no market demand, something new and untried, where the values are intrinsic and have nothing to do with standardized values.

Cather, Willa

19.

It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up, because by that time I was too famous.

Benchley, Robert

20.

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

21.

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

Pound, Ezra

22.

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

23.

Writers are always selling somebody out.

Didion, Joan

24.

There are hardly half a dozen writers in England today who have not sold out to the enemy. Even when their good work has been a success, Mammon grips them and whispers: More money for more work.

Crowley, Aleister

25.

You can fire your secretary, divorce your spouse, abandon your children. But they remain your co-authors forever.

Goodman, Ellen

26.

Often I think writing is a sheer paring away of oneself leaving always something thinner, barer, more meager.

27.

The trouble began with Forster. After him it was considered ungentlemanly to write more than five or six novels.

Burgess, Anthony

28.

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

Benchley, Robert

29.

Creative writers are always greater than the causes that they represent.

Forster, Edward M.

30.

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

31.

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

32.

What I like in a good author isn't what he says, but what he whispers.

Smith, Logan Pearsall

33.

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

Woolf, Virginia

34.

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

Corbett, James J.

35.

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

Lewis, Cecil Day

36.

For a creative writer possession of the truth is less important than emotional sincerity.

Orwell, George

37.

He is outside of everything, and alien everywhere. He is an aesthetic solitary. His beautiful, light imagination is the wing that on the autumn evening just brushes the dusky window.

James, Henry

38.

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

Freud, Sigmund

39.

Writing is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, then it becomes a master, then it becomes a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster and fling him to the public.

Churchill, Winston

40.

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

41.

The process of writing has something infinite about it. Even though it is interrupted each night, it is one single notation.

Canetti, Elias

42.

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

Steinbeck, John

43.

Every writer creates his own precursors. His work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify the future.

Borges, Jorge Luis

44.

Like all writers, he measured the achievements of others by what they had accomplished, asking of them that they measure him by what he envisaged or planned.

Borges, Jorge Luis

45.

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

46.

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.

Franklin, Benjamin

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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

50.

The secret of all good writing is sound judgment.

Horace