Motivational Quotes

Writers and writing

The writing of the wise are the only riches our posterity cannot squander.

- Landor, Walter Savage

Best Quotes about Writers and writing

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

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

The ambivalence of writing is such that it can be considered both an act and an interpretive process that follows after an act with which it cannot coincide. As such, it both affirms and denies its own nature.

Man, Paul De

Writing is a craft not an art.

Zinsser, William

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

Sand, George

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

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

Hemingway, Ernest

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

Pound, Ezra

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

Baldwin, James

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

Hellman, Lillian

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

16.

To write is a humiliation.

Dahlberg, Edward

17.

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

Smith, Dr. Walter

18.

What I like in a good author isn't what he says, but what he whispers.

Smith, Logan Pearsall

19.

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

20.

I am always interested in why young people become writers, and from talking with many I have concluded that most do not want to be writers working eight and ten hours a day and accomplishing little; they want to have been writers, garnering the rewards of having completed a best-seller. They aspire to the rewards of writing but not to the travail.

Michener, James A.

21.

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

22.

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

Hellman, Lillian

23.

Analogies, it is true, decide nothing, but they can make one feel more at home.

Freud, Sigmund

24.

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

Dyer, Wayne

25.

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

Zinsser, William

26.

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

Pascal, Blaise

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

30.

Some American writers who have known each other for years have never met in the daytime or when both were sober.

Thurber, James

31.

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

Bach, Richard

32.

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

Russell, Bertrand

33.

I write in order to attain that feeling of tension relieved and function achieved which a cow enjoys on giving milk.

Mencken, H. L.

34.

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

Vries, Peter De

35.

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

36.

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

37.

Writing is thinking on paper.

Zinsser, William

38.

Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing.

Mailer, Norman

39.

The writer isn't made in a vacuum. Writers are witnesses. The reason we need writers is because we need witnesses to this terrifying century.

Doctorow, E. L.

40.

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

Byron, Lord

41.

Good writing excites me, and makes life worth living.

Pinter, Harold

42.

Writers and politicians are natural rivals. Both groups try to make the world in their own images; they fight for the same territory.

Rushdie, Salman

43.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

44.

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

Dennis, Patrick

45.

The writer probably knows what he meant when he wrote a book, but he should immediately forget what he meant when he's written it.

Golding, William

46.

I hate the actor and audience business. An author should be in among the crowd, kicking their shins or cheering them on to some mischief or merriment.

Lawrence, D. H.

47.

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

Collins, Jackie

48.

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

49.

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

Swift, Jonathan

50.

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

Joyce, James