Motivational Quotes

Writers and writing

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

Best Quotes about Writers and writing

If a nation loses its storytellers, it loses its childhood.

Handke, Peter

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

Orwell, George

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

An author who speaks about his own books is almost as bad as a mother who talks about her own children.

Disraeli, Benjamin

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

Rushdie, Salman

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

Churchill, Charles

Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence.

Walker, Alice

I was in a queer mood, thinking myself very old: but now I am a woman again -- as I always am when I write.

Woolf, Virginia

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

Corbett, James J.

10.

Writing is the incurable itch that possesses many.

Juvenal, (Decimus Junius Juvenalis)

11.

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

12.

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.

13.

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

Wilde, Oscar

14.

Let's face it, writing is hell.

Styron, William

15.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

16.

You don't write because you want to say something; you write because you've got something to say.

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

Asimov, Isaac

20.

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

Joyce, James

21.

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

22.

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

Rosten, Leo

23.

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

Doren, Carl Van

24.

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

25.

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

Ellman, Lucy

26.

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

Dennis, Patrick

27.

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

28.

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

Nicolson, Harold

29.

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

30.

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

Smith, Logan Pearsall

31.

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

32.

Writers are a little below the clowns and a little above the trained seals.

Steinbeck, John

33.

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

34.

Like stones, words are laborious and unforgiving, and the fitting of them together, like the fitting of stones, demands great patience and strength of purpose and particular skill.

Morrison, Edmund

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.

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

Butler, Samuel

37.

Writing is the continuation of politics by other means.

Sollers, Philippe

38.

If written directions alone would suffice, libraries wouldn't need to have the rest of the universities attached.

Martin, Judith

39.

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

Thurber, James

40.

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

41.

Practically everybody in New York has half a mind to write a book, and does.

Marx, Groucho

42.

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

43.

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

Kraus, Karl

44.

Easy writings curse is hard reading.

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley

45.

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

46.

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

47.

People want to know why I do this, why I write such gross stuff. I like to tell them that I have the heart of a small boy -- and I keep it in a jar on my desk.

King, Stephen

48.

If I had more time I would write a shorter letter.

Pascal, Blaise

49.

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

Smith, Dr. Walter

50.

A writer is a person who has solutions for which there are no riddles.

Nunn, Gregory