Motivational Quotes

Writers and writing

The trouble with young writers is that they are all in their sixties.

- Maugham, W. Somerset

Best Quotes about Writers and writing

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

Faulkner, William

All writers are vain, selfish and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives lies a mystery. Writing a book is a long, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.

Orwell, George

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

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

Hazlitt, William

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

Pascal, Blaise

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

Marquez, Gabriel Garcia

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

You must often make erasures if you mean to write what is worthy of being read a second time; and don't labor for the admiration of the crowd, but be content with a few choice readers.

Horace

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

Collins, Jackie

10.

Like all writers, he measured the achievements of others by what they had accomplished, asking of them that they measure him by what he envisaged or planned.

Borges, Jorge Luis

11.

Writers are always selling somebody out.

Didion, Joan

12.

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.

13.

Every writer is a narcissist. This does not mean that he is vain; it only means that he is hopelessly self-absorbed.

Rosten, Leo

14.

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

Porter, Cole

15.

Writers like teeth are divided into incisors and grinders.

Bagehot, Walter

16.

The creations of a great writer are little more than the moods and passions of his own heart, given surnames and Christian names, and sent to walk the earth.

Yeats, William Butler

17.

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

18.

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

Nicolson, Harold

19.

The cure for writers cramp is writer's block.

Leon, Inigo de

20.

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

21.

Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them.

O'Connor, Flannery

22.

A writer is someone who can make a riddle out of an answer.

Kraus, Karl

23.

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

24.

Writing is a craft not an art.

Zinsser, William

25.

Every writing career starts as a personal quest for sainthood, for self-betterment. Sooner or later, and as a rule quite soon, a man discovers that his pen accomplishes a lot more than his soul.

Brodsky, Joseph

26.

I think of an author as somebody who goes into the marketplace and puts down his rug and says, I will tell you a story, and then he passes the hat.

Davies, Robertson

27.

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

Dyer, Wayne

28.

I know not, Madam, that you have a right, upon moral principles, to make your readers suffer so much.

Johnson, Samuel

29.

A book should be luminous not voluminous.

Bovee, Christian Nevell

30.

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

Gribbon, George

31.

I never think when I write. Nobody can do two things at the same time and do them well.

Marquis, Don

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.

The free-lance writer is a man who is paid per piece or per word or perhaps.

Benchley, Robert

34.

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

Lewis, Cecil Day

35.

No poet or novelist wishes he were the only one who ever lived, but most of them wish they were the only one alive, and quite a number fondly believe their wish has been granted.

Auden, W. H.

36.

The trouble began with Forster. After him it was considered ungentlemanly to write more than five or six novels.

Burgess, Anthony

37.

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

38.

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

Ferber, Edna

39.

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

Ellman, Lucy

40.

Great writers are the saints for the godless.

Brookner, Anita

41.

I cringe when critics say I'm a master of the popular novel. What's an unpopular novel?

Shaw, Irwin

42.

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

Smith, Logan Pearsall

43.

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

Pound, Ezra

44.

I make no complaint. I am a writer. I do not accept my condition; I will strive to change it; but I inhabit it, I am trying to learn from it.

Rushdie, Salman

45.

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

46.

Writing is the continuation of politics by other means.

Sollers, Philippe

47.

It requires more than mere genius to be an author.

La Bruyere, Jean De

48.

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

49.

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