Motivational Quotes

Writers and writing

It's hard enough to write a good drama, it's much harder to write a good comedy, and it's hardest of all to write a drama with comedy. Which is what life is.

- Lemmon, Jack

Best Quotes about Writers and writing

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

Smith, Dr. Walter

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

Twain, Mark

To be a good diarist, one must have a snouty, sneaky mind.

Nicolson, Harold

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

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

Faulkner, William

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

Corbett, James J.

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

Zinsser, William

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

Writing is simple. First you have to make sure you have plenty of paper... sharp pencils... typewriter ribbon. Then put your belly up to your desk... roll a sheet of paper into the typewriter... and stare at it until beads of blood appear on your forehead.

10.

Writing is turning one's worst moments into money.

Donleavy, J. P.

11.

Really, in the end, the only thing that can make you a writer is the person that you are, the intensity of your feeling, the honesty of your vision, the unsentimental acknowledgment of the endless interest of the life around and within you. Virtually nobody can help you deliberately-many people will help you unintentionally.

Rau, Santha Rama

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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.

16.

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

Freud, Sigmund

17.

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

Porter, Cole

18.

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

Vorse, Mary Heaton

19.

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.

20.

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

Pascal, Blaise

21.

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

Gribbon, George

22.

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

23.

Many writers who choose to be active in the world lose not virtue but time, and that stillness without which literature cannot be made.

Vidal, Gore

24.

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

Ferber, Edna

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

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.

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

Zinsser, William

30.

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

Thurber, James

31.

The writer is more concerned to know than to judge.

Maugham, W. Somerset

32.

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

33.

Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence.

Walker, Alice

34.

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

Kesey, Ken

35.

It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by. How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment? for the moment passes, it is forgotten; the mood is gone; life itself is gone. That is where the writer scores over his fellows: he catches the changes of his mind on the hop. Growth is exciting; growth is dynamic and alarming. Growth of the soul, growth of the mind.

Sackville-West, Vita

36.

It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up, because by that time I was too famous.

Benchley, Robert

37.

Writers, you know, are the beggars of Western society.

Paz, Octavio

38.

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

Hemingway, Ernest

39.

I don't regard Brecht as a man of iron-gray purpose and intellect, I think he is a theatrical whore of the first quality.

Hall, Sir Peter

40.

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.

41.

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

42.

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

43.

Who often, but without success, have prayed for apt Alliteration's artful aid.

Churchill, Charles

44.

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

Auden, W. H.

45.

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

Borges, Jorge Luis

46.

The writer must write what he has to say, not speak it.

Hemingway, Ernest

47.

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

Butler, Samuel

48.

Writing a novel without being asked seems a bit like having a baby when you have nowhere to live.

Ellman, Lucy

49.

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

50.

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

Doren, Carl Van