Motivational Quotes

Writers and writing

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

- Horace

Best Quotes about Writers and writing

Let's face it, writing is hell.

Styron, William

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

Dennis, Patrick

Of the creative spirits that flourished in Concord, Massachusetts, during the middle of the nineteenth century, it might be said that Hawthorne loved men but felt estranged from them, Emerson loved ideas even more than men, and Thoreau loved himself.

Edel, Leon

If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don't listen to writers talking about writing or themselves.

Hellman, Lillian

Good writing excites me, and makes life worth living.

Pinter, Harold

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

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

If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the Ode on a Grecian Urn is worth any number of old ladies.

Faulkner, William

Hard writing makes easy reading. Easy writing makes hard reading.

Zinsser, William

10.

For a country to have a great writer is like having another government. That's why no r?gime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones.

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander

11.

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

12.

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

Pound, Ezra

13.

The characteristic of Chaucer is intensity: of Spencer, remoteness: of Milton elevation and of Shakespeare everything.

Hazlitt, William

14.

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

15.

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

Nunn, Gregory

16.

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

17.

If you're going to write, don't pretend to write down. It's going to be the best you can do, and it's the fact that it's the best you can do that kills you.

Parker, Dorothy

18.

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

19.

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

Rushdie, Salman

20.

The moving finger writes, and having written moves on. Nor all thy piety nor all thy wit, can cancel half a line of it.

Khayyam, Omar

21.

He who cannot limit himself will never know how to write.

Boileau, Nicholas

22.

Writing is a question of finding a certain rhythm. I compare it to the rhythms of jazz. Much of the time life is a sort of rhythmic progression of three characters. If one tells oneself that life is like that, one feels it less arbitrary.

Sagan, Francoise

23.

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.

24.

A writer never reads his work. For him, it is the unreadable, a secret, and he cannot remain face to face with it. A secret, because he is separated from it.

Blanchot, Maurice

25.

A book should be luminous not voluminous.

Bovee, Christian Nevell

26.

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

Canetti, Elias

27.

Mr. Faulkner, of course, is interested in making your mind rather than your flesh creep.

Fadiman, Clifton

28.

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.

Franklin, Benjamin

29.

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

30.

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

31.

No pen, no ink, no table, no room, no time, no quiet, no inclination.

Joyce, James

32.

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

Liebling, A. J.

33.

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

Benchley, Robert

34.

The first essential in writing about anything is that the writer should have no experience of the matter.

Duncan, Isadora

35.

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

36.

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

Bach, Richard

37.

When all things are equal, translucence in writing is more effective than transparency, just as glow is more revealing than glare.

Thurber, James

38.

A great writer creates a world of his own and his readers are proud to live in it. A lesser writer may entice them in for a moment, but soon he will watch them filing out.

Connolly, Cyril

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.

Every human being has hundreds of separate people living under his skin. The talent of a writer is his ability to give them their separate names, identities, personalities and have them relate to other characters living with him.

Brooks, Mel

41.

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

Wilde, Oscar

42.

Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence.

Walker, Alice

43.

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

Auden, W. H.

44.

The cure for writers cramp is writer's block.

Leon, Inigo de

45.

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

Martin, Judith

46.

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

47.

The future author is one who discovers that language, the exploration and manipulation of the resources of language, will serve him in winning through to his way.

Wilder, Thornton

48.

There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.

Hemingway, Ernest

49.

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

50.

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

Steinbeck, John