Motivational Quotes

Writers and writing

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

- Gribbon, George

Best Quotes about Writers and writing

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

Steinbeck, John

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

Only amateurs say that they write for their own amusement. Writing is not an amusing occupation. It is a combination of ditch-digging, mountain-climbing, treadmill and childbirth. Writing may be interesting, absorbing, exhilarating, racking, relieving. But amusing? Never!

Ferber, Edna

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

Butler, Samuel

Writing is the continuation of politics by other means.

Sollers, Philippe

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

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

Forster, Edward M.

Writing is turning one's worst moments into money.

Donleavy, J. P.

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

Shaw, Irwin

10.

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

11.

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

Smith, Nancy Banks

12.

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

13.

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

14.

If you wish to be a writer; write!

Epictetus

15.

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

16.

Every writing career starts as a personal quest for sainthood, for self-betterment. Sooner or later, and as a rule quite soon, a man discovers that his pen accomplishes a lot more than his soul.

Brodsky, Joseph

17.

The best way to become a successful writer is to read good writing, remember it, and then forget where you remember it from.

Fowler, Gene

18.

I make no complaint. I am a writer. I do not accept my condition; I will strive to change it; but I inhabit it, I am trying to learn from it.

Rushdie, Salman

19.

What you're trying to do when you write is to crowd the reader out of his own space and occupy it with yours, in a good cause. You're trying to take over his sensibility and deliver an experience that moves from mere information.

Stone, Robert

20.

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

Smith, Dr. Walter

21.

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

Dahlberg, Edward

22.

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.

23.

Writing is a craft not an art.

Zinsser, William

24.

Every secret of a writer's soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written large in his works.

Woolf, Virginia

25.

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

26.

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

Hemingway, Ernest

27.

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

28.

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

Bennett, Arnold

29.

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

30.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

31.

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

Doren, Carl Van

32.

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.

33.

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

Lewis, Cecil Day

34.

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

Naipaul, V. S.

35.

Who wants to become a writer? And why? Because it's the answer to everything. To Why am I here? To uselessness. It's the streaming reason for living. To note, to pin down, to build up, to create, to be astonished at nothing, to cherish the oddities, to let nothing go down the drain, to make something, to make a great flower out of life, even if it's a cactus.

Bagnold, Enid

36.

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

Bach, Richard

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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.

40.

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

Baldwin, James

41.

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

Liebling, A. J.

42.

If written directions alone would suffice, libraries wouldn't need to have the rest of the universities attached.

Martin, Judith

43.

Style may defined as the proper words in the proper places.

Swift, Jonathan

44.

An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmasters of ever afterwards.

45.

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

46.

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

Lawrence, D. H.

47.

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

48.

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

Sontag, Susan

49.

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

50.

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