Motivational Quotes

Writers and writing

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

- Hemingway, Ernest

Best Quotes about Writers and writing

I never think when I write. Nobody can do two things at the same time and do them well.

Marquis, Don

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

Auden, W. H.

The free-lance writer is a man who is paid per piece or per word or perhaps.

Benchley, Robert

The shelf life of the modern hardback writer is somewhere between the milk and the yogurt.

Mortimer, John

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

Gribbon, George

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

Marquez, Gabriel Garcia

The walls are the publishers of the poor.

Galeano, Eduardo

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

Woolf, Virginia

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

10.

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

11.

Good writing is clear thinking made visible.

Wheeler, Bill

12.

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

13.

I would love to spend all my time writing to you; I'd love to share with you all that goes through my mind, all that weighs on my heart, all that gives air to my soul; phantoms of art, dreams that would be so beautiful if they could come true.

Pirandello, Luigi

14.

It's very hard to be a gentleman and a writer.

Maugham, W. Somerset

15.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

16.

Writers aren't people exactly. Or, if they're any good, they're a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person. It's like actors, who try so pathetically not to look in mirrors. Who lean back ward trying -- only to see their faces in the reflecting chandeliers.

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

Bowen, Catherine Drinker

20.

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

Vries, Peter De

21.

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

Kesey, Ken

22.

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

23.

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

Canetti, Elias

24.

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.

25.

The creations of a great writer are little more than the moods and passions of his own heart, given surnames and Christian names, and sent to walk the earth.

Yeats, William Butler

26.

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

27.

The trouble with young writers is that they are all in their sixties.

Maugham, W. Somerset

28.

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

Steinbeck, John

29.

How people treat you is their karma; how you react is yours.

Dyer, Wayne

30.

The need to express oneself in writing springs from a mal-adjustment to life, or from an inner conflict which the adolescent (or the grown man) cannot resolve in action. Those to whom action comes as easily as breathing rarely feel the need to break loose from the real, to rise above, and describe it... I do not mean that it is enough to be maladjusted to become a great writer, but writing is, for some, a method of resolving a conflict, provided they have the necessary talent.

Maurois, Andre

31.

Good writing excites me, and makes life worth living.

Pinter, Harold

32.

Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over.

Hemingway, Ernest

33.

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

34.

Writing is a craft not an art.

Zinsser, William

35.

Writing crystallizes thought and thought produces action.

Meyer, Paul J.

36.

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

37.

Good authors, too, who once knew better words now only use four-letter words writing prose... anything goes.

Porter, Cole

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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.

41.

The secret of all good writing is sound judgment.

Horace

42.

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

Zinsser, William

43.

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

Pound, Ezra

44.

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

Burgess, Anthony

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

Faulkner, William

48.

To withdraw myself from myself has ever been my sole, my entire, my sincere motive in scribbling at all.

Byron, Lord

49.

It requires more than mere genius to be an author.

La Bruyere, Jean De

50.

As to the adjective, when in doubt strike it out.