Motivational Quotes

Writers and writing

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

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

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

Twain, Mark

Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence.

Walker, Alice

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

Rushdie, Salman

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

Steinbeck, John

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

Pound, Ezra

We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.

Hemingway, Ernest

The writer who loses his self-doubt, who gives way as he grows old to a sudden euphoria, to prolixity, should stop writing immediately: the time has come for him to lay aside his pen.

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle

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

10.

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

Orwell, George

11.

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

Mortimer, John

12.

Good writing excites me, and makes life worth living.

Pinter, Harold

13.

What has a writer to be bombastic about? Whatever good a man may write is the consequence of accident, luck, or surprise, and nobody is more surprised than an honest writer when he makes a good phrase or says something truthful.

Dahlberg, Edward

14.

People want to know why I do this, why I write such gross stuff. I like to tell them that I have the heart of a small boy -- and I keep it in a jar on my desk.

King, Stephen

15.

It requires more than mere genius to be an author.

La Bruyere, Jean De

16.

Writing isn't hard. It isn't any harder than ditch-digging.

Dennis, Patrick

17.

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

White, Elwyn Brooks

18.

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

Benchley, Robert

19.

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

20.

Writers are always selling somebody out.

Didion, Joan

21.

No doubt I shall go on writing, stumbling across tundras of unmeaning, planting words like bloody flags in my wake. Loose ends, things unrelated, shifts, nightmare journeys, cities arrived at and left, meetings, desertions, betrayals, all manner of unions, adulteries, triumphs, defeats... these are the facts.

Trocchi, Alexander

22.

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

23.

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

Burgess, Anthony

24.

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

25.

Every writer is a narcissist. This does not mean that he is vain; it only means that he is hopelessly self-absorbed.

Rosten, Leo

26.

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

Collins, Jackie

27.

Writing is turning one's worst moments into money.

Donleavy, J. P.

28.

Good writing is clear thinking made visible.

Wheeler, Bill

29.

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

Shaw, Irwin

30.

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.

31.

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

32.

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

33.

Easy writings curse is hard reading.

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley

34.

Life cannot defeat a writer who is in love with writing; for life itself is a writer's love until death.

Ferber, Edna

35.

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

Martin, Judith

36.

Writing is thinking on paper.

Zinsser, William

37.

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

Benchley, Robert

38.

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

Naipaul, V. S.

39.

The cure for writers cramp is writer's block.

Leon, Inigo de

40.

I was in a queer mood, thinking myself very old: but now I am a woman again -- as I always am when I write.

Woolf, Virginia

41.

Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer's loneliness, but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.

Hemingway, Ernest

42.

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

Corbett, James J.

43.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

44.

Four basic premises of writing: clarity, brevity, simplicity, and humanity.

Zinsser, William

45.

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

46.

To note an artist's limitations is but to define his talent. A reporter can write equally well about everything that is presented to his view, but a creative writer can do his best only with what lies within the range and character of his deepest sympathies.

Cather, Willa

47.

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

48.

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

49.

The last thing we decide in writing a book is what to put first.

Pascal, Blaise

50.

Of course I'm a black writer. I'm not just a black writer, but categories like black writer, woman writer and Latin American writer aren't marginal anymore. We have to acknowledge that the thing we call literature is more pluralistic now, just as society ought to be. The melting pot never worked. We ought to be able to accept on equal terms everybody from the Hasidim to Walter Lippmann, from the Rastafarians to Ralph Bunche.

Morrison, Toni