Motivational Quotes

Writers and writing

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

Best Quotes about Writers and writing

The writer's language is to some degree the product of his own action; he is both the historian and the agent of his own language.

Man, Paul De

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

Pascal, Blaise

Writing is the incurable itch that possesses many.

Juvenal, (Decimus Junius Juvenalis)

To endow the writer publicly with a good fleshly body, to reveal that he likes dry white wine and underdone steak, is to make even more miraculous for me, and of a more divine essence, the products of his art. Far from the details of his daily life bringing nearer to me the nature of his inspiration and making it clearer, it is the whole mystical singularity of his condition which the writer emphasizes by such confidences. For I cannot but ascribe to some superhumanly the existence of beings vast enough to wear blue pajamas at the very moment when they manifest themselves as universal conscience.

Barthes, Roland

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

Kraus, Karl

Every writer creates his own precursors. His work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify the future.

Borges, Jorge Luis

Let's face it, writing is hell.

Styron, William

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

Singer, Isaac Bashevis

To withdraw myself from myself has ever been my sole, my entire, my sincere motive in scribbling at all.

Byron, Lord

10.

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

11.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

12.

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

Asimov, Isaac

13.

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

Duncan, Isadora

14.

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

Boileau, Nicholas

15.

Ultimately, literature is nothing but carpentry. With both you are working with reality, a material just as hard as wood.

Marquez, Gabriel Garcia

16.

The secret of all good writing is sound judgment.

Horace

17.

Writing is thinking on paper.

Zinsser, William

18.

Writers must fortify themselves with pride and egotism as best they can. The process is analogous to using sandbags and loose timbers to protect a house against flood. Writers are vulnerable creatures like anyone else. For what do they have in reality? Not sandbags, not timbers. Just a flimsy reputation and a name.

Aldiss, Brian

19.

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

Benchley, Robert

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

Steinbeck, John

23.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

24.

The trade of authorship is a violent, and indestructible obsession.

Sand, George

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

Anderson, Margaret

28.

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

29.

If I had not existed, someone else would have written me, Hemingway, Dostoevski, all of us.

Faulkner, William

30.

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

Dyer, Wayne

31.

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

32.

Clutter is the disease of American writing. We are a society strangling in unnecessary words, circular constructions, pompous frills and meaningless jargon.

Zinsser, William

33.

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

Twain, Mark

34.

A writer should be a joyous optimist. Anything that implies rejection of life is wrong for a writer.

Gribbon, George

35.

Every writer hopes or boldly assumes that his life is in some sense exemplary, that the particular will turn out to be universal.

Amis, Martin

36.

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

37.

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

38.

If I don't write to empty my mind, I go mad. As to that regular, uninterrupted love of writing. I do not understand it. I feel it as a torture, which I must get rid of, but never as a pleasure. On the contrary, I think composition a great pain.

Byron, Lord

39.

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

Rosten, Leo

40.

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

Marquis, Don

41.

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.

42.

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

Miller, Olin

43.

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

44.

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

Fadiman, Clifton

45.

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

Pascal, Blaise

46.

The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and about all time.

Shaw, George Bernard

47.

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.

48.

The moving finger writes, and having written moves on. Nor all thy piety nor all thy wit, can cancel half a line of it.

Khayyam, Omar

49.

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

50.

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