Motivational Quotes

Writers and writing

I am paid by the word, so I always write the shortest words possible.

- Russell, Bertrand

Best Quotes about Writers and writing

Style may defined as the proper words in the proper places.

Swift, Jonathan

The shelf life of the modern hardback writer is somewhere between the milk and the yogurt.

Mortimer, John

The walls are the publishers of the poor.

Galeano, Eduardo

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

Hemingway, Ernest

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

Smith, Logan Pearsall

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

Benchley, Robert

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

Pound, Ezra

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

Woolf, Virginia

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

Churchill, Charles

10.

There are two kinds of writers; the great ones who can give you truths, and the lessor ones, who can only give you themselves.

Fadiman, Clifton

11.

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

12.

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.

13.

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

14.

For a country to have a great writer is like having another government. That's why no r?gime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones.

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander

15.

There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately no one knows what they are.

Maugham, W. Somerset

16.

What no wife of a writer can ever understand is that a writer is working when he's staring out of the window.

Rascoe, Burton

17.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

18.

The writing of the wise are the only riches our posterity cannot squander.

Landor, Walter Savage

19.

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

Goodman, Ellen

20.

Let's face it, writing is hell.

Styron, William

21.

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

Johnson, Samuel

22.

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

Duncan, Isadora

23.

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

24.

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

Corbett, James J.

25.

My own experience has been that the tools I need for my trade are paper, tobacco, food, and a little whisky.

Faulkner, William

26.

Good novels are not written by orthodoxy-sniffers, nor by people who are conscience-stricken about their own orthodoxy. Good novels are written by people who are not frightened.

Orwell, George

27.

The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.

Vorse, Mary Heaton

28.

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

Pascal, Blaise

29.

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

30.

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

Singer, Isaac Bashevis

31.

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

32.

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

33.

Mr. Faulkner, of course, is interested in making your mind rather than your flesh creep.

Fadiman, Clifton

34.

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

Kraus, Karl

35.

If you describe things as better than they are, you are considered to be a romantic; if you describe things as worse than they are, you will be called a realist; and if you describe things exactly as they are, you will be thought of as a satirist.

Crisp, Quentin

36.

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

Collins, Jackie

37.

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

Sontag, Susan

38.

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

Steinbeck, John

39.

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

40.

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

41.

The more books we read, the clearer it becomes that the true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece and that no other task is of any consequence.

Connolly, Cyril

42.

Writing is like getting married. One should never commit oneself until one is amazed at one's luck.

Murdoch, Iris

43.

Good writing excites me, and makes life worth living.

Pinter, Harold

44.

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

Bach, Richard

45.

Creative writers are always greater than the causes that they represent.

Forster, Edward M.

46.

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

47.

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

Twain, Mark

48.

The secret of all good writing is sound judgment.

Horace

49.

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.

50.

A book should be luminous not voluminous.

Bovee, Christian Nevell