Motivational Quotes

Writers and writing

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

- Nicolson, Harold

Best Quotes about Writers and writing

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.

The role of the writer is not simply to arrange Being according to his own lights; he must also serve as a medium to Being and remain open to its often unfathomable dictates. This is the only way the work can transcend its creator and radiate its meaning further than the author himself can see or perceive.

Havel, Vaclav

It's very hard to be a gentleman and a writer.

Maugham, W. Somerset

Writers aren't people exactly. Or, if they're any good, they're a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person. It's like actors, who try so pathetically not to look in mirrors. Who lean back ward trying -- only to see their faces in the reflecting chandeliers.

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

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

Doren, Carl Van

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

Pascal, Blaise

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

Rushdie, Salman

For a creative writer possession of the truth is less important than emotional sincerity.

Orwell, George

10.

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

11.

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

12.

Writing is not like painting where you add. It is not what you put on the canvas that the reader sees. Writing is more like a sculpture where you remove, you eliminate in order to make the work visible. Even those pages you remove somehow remain.

Wiesel, Elie

13.

Writing is thinking on paper.

Zinsser, William

14.

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

Kraus, Karl

15.

Writing is the continuation of politics by other means.

Sollers, Philippe

16.

Style and Structure are the essence of a book; great ideas are hogwash.

Nabokov, Vladimir

17.

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

Pound, Ezra

18.

The process of writing has something infinite about it. Even though it is interrupted each night, it is one single notation.

Canetti, Elias

19.

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

20.

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

Burgess, Anthony

21.

The need to express oneself in writing springs from a mal-adjustment to life, or from an inner conflict which the adolescent (or the grown man) cannot resolve in action. Those to whom action comes as easily as breathing rarely feel the need to break loose from the real, to rise above, and describe it... I do not mean that it is enough to be maladjusted to become a great writer, but writing is, for some, a method of resolving a conflict, provided they have the necessary talent.

Maurois, Andre

22.

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

23.

I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can.

Hemingway, Ernest

24.

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

Auden, W. H.

25.

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

Singer, Isaac Bashevis

26.

The profession of book writing makes horse racing seem like a solid, stable business.

Steinbeck, John

27.

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

Smith, Logan Pearsall

28.

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

29.

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

30.

Writing crystallizes thought and thought produces action.

Meyer, Paul J.

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

Hazlitt, William

34.

The writer is either a practicing recluse or a delinquent, guilt-ridden one; or both. Usually both.

Sontag, Susan

35.

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

Marquis, Don

36.

If you wish to be a writer; write!

Epictetus

37.

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

Ellman, Lucy

38.

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

Smith, Nancy Banks

39.

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

Goodman, Ellen

40.

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

41.

Most bad books get that way because their authors are engaged in trying to justify themselves. If a vain author is an alcoholic, then the most sympathetically portrayed character in his book will be an alcoholic. This sort of thing is very boring for outsiders.

Vizinczey, Stephen

42.

Writing is the incurable itch that possesses many.

Juvenal, (Decimus Junius Juvenalis)

43.

Habits in writing as in life are only useful if they are broken as soon as they cease to be advantageous.

Maugham, W. Somerset

44.

Writing is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, then it becomes a master, then it becomes a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster and fling him to the public.

Churchill, Winston

45.

I can write better than anybody who can write faster, and I can write faster than anybody who can write better.

Liebling, A. J.

46.

Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence.

Walker, Alice

47.

Good writing is clear thinking made visible.

Wheeler, Bill

48.

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

Wilde, Oscar

49.

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

Woolf, Virginia

50.

A word is a bud attempting to become a twig. How can one not dream while writing? It is the pen which dreams. The blank page gives the right to dream.

Bachelard, Gaston