Motivational Quotes

Writers and writing

It requires more than mere genius to be an author.

- La Bruyere, Jean De

Best Quotes about Writers and writing

The trade of authorship is a violent, and indestructible obsession.

Sand, George

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

The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.

Vorse, Mary Heaton

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.

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

Pound, Ezra

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

Ferber, Edna

The secret of all good writing is sound judgment.

Horace

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

Asimov, Isaac

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

Goodman, Ellen

10.

His style is chaos illumined by flashes of lightning. As a writer he has mastered everything except language.

Wilde, Oscar

11.

The first thing an unpublished author should remember is that no one asked him to write in the first place.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

12.

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

13.

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

14.

I am paid by the word, so I always write the shortest words possible.

Russell, Bertrand

15.

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

Nunn, Gregory

16.

Let's face it, writing is hell.

Styron, William

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.

You expect far too much of a first sentence. Think of it as analogous to a good country breakfast: what we want is something simple, but nourishing to the imagination. Hold the philosophy, hold the adjectives, just give us a plain subject and verb and perhaps a wholesome, nonfattening adverb or two.

Mcmurtry, Larry

19.

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, as those move easiest who have learned to dance. 'Tis not enough no harshness gives offence. The sound must seem an echo to the sense.

Pope, Alexander

20.

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

21.

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

Byron, Lord

22.

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

Dahlberg, Edward

23.

The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and about all time.

Shaw, George Bernard

24.

It requires more than mere genius to be an author.

La Bruyere, Jean De

25.

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

26.

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

Borges, Jorge Luis

27.

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

Lawrence, D. H.

28.

Every writer hopes or boldly assumes that his life is in some sense exemplary, that the particular will turn out to be universal.

Amis, Martin

29.

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

Woolf, Virginia

30.

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

31.

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

Corbett, James J.

32.

Great writers are the saints for the godless.

Brookner, Anita

33.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

34.

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

Vries, Peter De

35.

All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.

36.

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

37.

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

Doren, Carl Van

38.

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

Hazlitt, William

39.

They can't yank a novelist like they can a pitcher. A novelist has to go the full nine, even if it kills him.

Hemingway, Ernest

40.

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

Lewis, Cecil Day

41.

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

42.

Writers must fortify themselves with pride and egotism as best they can. The process is analogous to using sandbags and loose timbers to protect a house against flood. Writers are vulnerable creatures like anyone else. For what do they have in reality? Not sandbags, not timbers. Just a flimsy reputation and a name.

Aldiss, Brian

43.

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

Collins, Jackie

44.

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

Butler, Samuel

45.

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

46.

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

Zinsser, William

47.

I never know what I think about something until I read what I've written on it.

Faulkner, William

48.

One reason writers write is out of revenge. Life hurts; certain ideas and experiences hurt; one wants to clarify, to set out illuminations, to replay the old bad scenes and get the Treppenworte said -- the words one didn't have the strength or ripeness to say when those words were necessary for one's dignity or survival.

Ozick, Cynthia

49.

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

50.

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

White, Elwyn Brooks