Motivational Quotes

Writers and writing

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

- Orwell, George

Best Quotes about Writers and writing

It requires more than mere genius to be an author.

La Bruyere, Jean De

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

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

Marquis, Don

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

Faulkner, 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

Only amateurs say that they write for their own amusement. Writing is not an amusing occupation. It is a combination of ditch-digging, mountain-climbing, treadmill and childbirth. Writing may be interesting, absorbing, exhilarating, racking, relieving. But amusing? Never!

Ferber, Edna

I like to write when I feel spiteful. It is like having a good sneeze.

Lawrence, D. H.

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

There are hardly half a dozen writers in England today who have not sold out to the enemy. Even when their good work has been a success, Mammon grips them and whispers: More money for more work.

Crowley, Aleister

10.

To write is a humiliation.

Dahlberg, Edward

11.

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

12.

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

Anderson, Margaret

13.

He who cannot limit himself will never know how to write.

Boileau, Nicholas

14.

Good writing excites me, and makes life worth living.

Pinter, Harold

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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.

19.

There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.

Hemingway, Ernest

20.

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

21.

I'm the kind of writer that people think other people are reading.

Naipaul, V. S.

22.

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.

Franklin, Benjamin

23.

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

24.

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

Smith, Dr. Walter

25.

Writing is more than anything a compulsion, like some people wash their hands thirty times a day for fear of awful consequences if they do not. It pays a whole lot better than this type of compulsion, but it is no more heroic.

Burchill, Julie

26.

Writers are always selling somebody out.

Didion, Joan

27.

The secret of all good writing is sound judgment.

Horace

28.

A book should be luminous not voluminous.

Bovee, Christian Nevell

29.

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

Dennis, Patrick

30.

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

Pascal, Blaise

31.

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

32.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

33.

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

Nunn, Gregory

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

Paz, Octavio

37.

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

Dyer, Wayne

38.

He is a man of thirty-five, but looks fifty. He is bald, has varicose veins and wears spectacles, or would wear them if his only pair were not chronically lost. If things are normal with him, he will be suffering from malnutrition, but if he has recently had a lucky streak, he will be suffering from a hangover. At present it is half past eleven in the morning, and according to his schedule he should have started work two hours ago; but even if he had made any serious effort to start he would have been frustrated by the almost continuous ringing of the telephone bell, the yells of the baby, the rattle of an electric drill out in the street, and the heavy boots of his creditors clumping up the stairs. The most recent interruption was the arrival of the second post, which brought him two circulars and an income tax demand printed in red. Needless to say this person is a writer.

Orwell, George

39.

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

Smith, Nancy Banks

40.

Great writers are the saints for the godless.

Brookner, Anita

41.

Easy writings curse is hard reading.

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley

42.

The first essential in writing about anything is that the writer should have no experience of the matter.

Duncan, Isadora

43.

Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar.

White, Elwyn Brooks

44.

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.

45.

Let's face it, writing is hell.

Styron, William

46.

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

Rosten, Leo

47.

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

Canetti, Elias

48.

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