Motivational Quotes

Writers and writing

A writer writes not because he is educated but because he is driven by the need to communicate. Behind the need to communicate is the need to share. Behind the need to share is the need to be understood. The writer wants to be understood much more than he wants to be respected or praised or even loved. And that perhaps, is what makes him different from others.

- Rosten, Leo

Best Quotes about Writers and writing

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

Steinbeck, John

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

Singer, Isaac Bashevis

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

Rushdie, Salman

Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer's loneliness, but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.

Hemingway, Ernest

The walls are the publishers of the poor.

Galeano, Eduardo

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

The biggest obstacle to professional writing is the necessity for changing a typewriter ribbon.

Benchley, Robert

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

James, William

10.

Writers like teeth are divided into incisors and grinders.

Bagehot, Walter

11.

Good writing excites me, and makes life worth living.

Pinter, Harold

12.

It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up, because by that time I was too famous.

Benchley, Robert

13.

Every human being has hundreds of separate people living under his skin. The talent of a writer is his ability to give them their separate names, identities, personalities and have them relate to other characters living with him.

Brooks, Mel

14.

It requires more than mere genius to be an author.

La Bruyere, Jean De

15.

I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismograph.

Kesey, Ken

16.

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

17.

The writer is more concerned to know than to judge.

Maugham, W. Somerset

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

Asimov, Isaac

21.

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

22.

I think it's bad to talk about one's present work, for it spoils something at the root of the creative act. It discharges the tension.

Mailer, Norman

23.

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

Pound, Ezra

24.

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

Dyer, Wayne

25.

The future author is one who discovers that language, the exploration and manipulation of the resources of language, will serve him in winning through to his way.

Wilder, Thornton

26.

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

27.

Any man who can write a page of living prose adds something to our life, and the man who can, as I can, is surely the last to resent someone who can do it even better. An artist cannot deny art, nor would he want to. A lover cannot deny love.

Chandler, Raymond

28.

Writing crystallizes thought and thought produces action.

Meyer, Paul J.

29.

Writing is the hardest way of earning a living, with the possible exception of wrestling alligators.

Miller, Olin

30.

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

Pascal, Blaise

31.

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

Handke, Peter

32.

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

33.

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

Bach, Richard

34.

The secret of all good writing is sound judgment.

Horace

35.

As to the adjective, when in doubt strike it out.

Twain, Mark

36.

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

Collins, Jackie

37.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

38.

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

39.

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

40.

For your born writer, nothing is so healing as the realization that he has come upon the right word.

Bowen, Catherine Drinker

41.

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

42.

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

Wilde, Oscar

43.

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

Boileau, Nicholas

44.

Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don't feel I should be doing something else.

Steinem, Gloria

45.

Good writing is clear thinking made visible.

Wheeler, Bill

46.

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

Steinbeck, John

47.

If you wish to be a writer; write!

Epictetus

48.

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

Canetti, Elias

49.

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

50.

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.