Motivational Quotes

Writers and writing

The only phenomenon with which writing has always been concomitant is the creation of cities and empires, that is the integration of large numbers of individuals into a political system, and their grading into castes or classes. It seems to have favored the exploitation of human beings rather than their enlightenment.

- Levi-Strauss, Claude

Best Quotes about Writers and writing

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

There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately no one knows what they are.

Maugham, W. Somerset

From the point of view of literature Mr. Kipling is a genius who drops his aspirates. From the point of view of life, he is a reporter who knows vulgarity better than any one has ever known it.

Wilde, Oscar

Agatha Christie has given more pleasure in bed than any other woman.

Smith, Nancy Banks

This is something that I cannot get over -- that a whole line could be written by half a man, that a work could be built on the quicksand of a character.

Kraus, Karl

The best way to become a successful writer is to read good writing, remember it, and then forget where you remember it from.

Fowler, Gene

Writing is turning one's worst moments into money.

Donleavy, J. P.

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

Asimov, Isaac

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

10.

A serious writer is not to be confounded with a solemn writer. A serious writer may be a hawk or a buzzard or even a popinjay, but a solemn writer is always a bloody owl.

Hemingway, Ernest

11.

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

12.

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

Collins, Jackie

13.

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

Pascal, Blaise

14.

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

15.

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.

16.

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

Auden, W. H.

17.

O Grub Street! how do I bemoan thee, whose graceless children scorn to own thee! . Yet thou hast greater cause to be ashamed of them, than they of thee.

Swift, Jonathan

18.

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

Pound, Ezra

19.

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

Lewis, Cecil Day

20.

My idea is always to reach my generation. The wise writer writes for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmasters of ever afterward.

21.

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

22.

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

Rushdie, Salman

23.

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

Churchill, Charles

24.

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

Mortimer, John

25.

In most cases a favorite writer is more with us in his book than he ever could have been in the flesh; since, being a writer, he is one who has studied and perfected this particular mode of personal incarnation, very likely to the detriment of any other. I should like as a matter of curiosity to see and hear for a moment the men whose works I admire; but I should hardly expect to find further intercourse particularly profitable.

Cooley, Charles Horton

26.

Ultimately, literature is nothing but carpentry. With both you are working with reality, a material just as hard as wood.

Marquez, Gabriel Garcia

27.

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

Paz, Octavio

28.

It is rarely that you see an American writer who is not hopelessly sane.

Anderson, Margaret

29.

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

Zinsser, William

30.

Writing is the continuation of politics by other means.

Sollers, Philippe

31.

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

Rushdie, Salman

32.

What an occupation! To sit and flay your fellow men and then offer their skins for sale and expect them to buy them.

Strindberg, J. August

33.

The writer is more concerned to know than to judge.

Maugham, W. Somerset

34.

Footnotes -- little dogs yapping at the heels of the text

James, William

35.

Levi-Strauss, Claude

36.

The walls are the publishers of the poor.

Galeano, Eduardo

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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.

40.

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

41.

A good writer is basically a story teller, not a scholar or a redeemer of mankind.

Singer, Isaac Bashevis

42.

I believe that it is my job not only to write books but to have them published. A book is like a child. You have to defend the life of a child.

Konrad, George

43.

The writer's language is to some degree the product of his own action; he is both the historian and the agent of his own language.

Man, Paul De

44.

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

Doren, Carl Van

45.

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

46.

A pathological business, writing, don't you think? Just look what a writer actually does: all that unnatural tense squatting and hunching, all those rituals: pathological!

Enzensberger, Hans Magnus

47.

Creative writers are always greater than the causes that they represent.

Forster, Edward M.

48.

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

49.

Good writing is clear thinking made visible.

Wheeler, Bill

50.

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