Motivational Quotes

Writers and writing

I cringe when critics say I'm a master of the popular novel. What's an unpopular novel?

- Shaw, Irwin

Best Quotes about Writers and writing

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

Johnson, Samuel

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

Kraus, Karl

Mostly, we authors must repeat ourselves -- that's the truth. We have two or three great moving experiences in our lives -- experiences so great and moving that it doesn't seem at the time that anyone else has been so caught up and pounded and dazzled and astonished and beaten and broken and rescued and illuminated and rewarded and humbled in just that way ever before.

The first thing an unpublished author should remember is that no one asked him to write in the first place. With this firmly in mind, he has no right to become discouraged just because other people are being published.

Farrar, John

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

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

Pound, Ezra

Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence.

Walker, Alice

To write is to make oneself the echo of what cannot cease speaking -- and since it cannot, in order to become its echo I have, in a way, to silence it. I bring to this incessant speech the decisiveness, the authority of my own silence.

Blanchot, Maurice

Great writers are the saints for the godless.

Brookner, Anita

10.

I can write better than anybody who can write faster, and I can write faster than anybody who can write better.

Liebling, A. J.

11.

We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.

Hemingway, Ernest

12.

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

Hemingway, Ernest

13.

Good writers are those who keep the language efficient. That is to say, keep it accurate, keep it clear.

Pound, Ezra

14.

What an occupation! To sit and flay your fellow men and then offer their skins for sale and expect them to buy them.

Strindberg, J. August

15.

What has a writer to be bombastic about? Whatever good a man may write is the consequence of accident, luck, or surprise, and nobody is more surprised than an honest writer when he makes a good phrase or says something truthful.

Dahlberg, Edward

16.

Of course I'm a black writer. I'm not just a black writer, but categories like black writer, woman writer and Latin American writer aren't marginal anymore. We have to acknowledge that the thing we call literature is more pluralistic now, just as society ought to be. The melting pot never worked. We ought to be able to accept on equal terms everybody from the Hasidim to Walter Lippmann, from the Rastafarians to Ralph Bunche.

Morrison, Toni

17.

I don't regard Brecht as a man of iron-gray purpose and intellect, I think he is a theatrical whore of the first quality.

Hall, Sir Peter

18.

To note an artist's limitations is but to define his talent. A reporter can write equally well about everything that is presented to his view, but a creative writer can do his best only with what lies within the range and character of his deepest sympathies.

Cather, Willa

19.

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

Twain, Mark

20.

I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can.

Hemingway, Ernest

21.

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

22.

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

Faulkner, William

23.

Good authors, too, who once knew better words now only use four-letter words writing prose... anything goes.

Porter, Cole

24.

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

25.

Some American writers who have known each other for years have never met in the daytime or when both were sober.

Thurber, James

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.

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

Miller, Olin

28.

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

Faulkner, William

29.

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

30.

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

Benchley, Robert

31.

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

Murdoch, Iris

32.

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

Joyce, James

33.

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

Anderson, Margaret

34.

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.

35.

A book should be luminous not voluminous.

Bovee, Christian Nevell

36.

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

37.

The only phenomenon with which writing has always been concomitant is the creation of cities and empires, that is the integration of large numbers of individuals into a political system, and their grading into castes or classes. It seems to have favored the exploitation of human beings rather than their enlightenment.

Levi-Strauss, Claude

38.

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

Byron, Lord

39.

Good writing is clear thinking made visible.

Wheeler, Bill

40.

The cure for writers cramp is writer's block.

Leon, Inigo de

41.

Easy writings curse is hard reading.

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley

42.

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

43.

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

44.

Four basic premises of writing: clarity, brevity, simplicity, and humanity.

Zinsser, William

45.

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

Boileau, Nicholas

46.

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

Corbett, James J.

47.

Writing is a craft not an art.

Zinsser, William

48.

Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing.

Mailer, Norman

49.

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

Ellman, Lucy

50.

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