Motivational Quotes

Writers and writing

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

Best Quotes about Writers and writing

Life cannot defeat a writer who is in love with writing; for life itself is a writer's love until death.

Ferber, Edna

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

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

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

Corbett, James J.

To be a good diarist, one must have a snouty, sneaky mind.

Nicolson, Harold

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

Faulkner, William

Great writers arrive among us like new diseases -- threatening, powerful, impatient for patients to pick up their virus, irresistible.

Raine, Craig

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

Byron, Lord

Writing is a craft not an art.

Zinsser, William

10.

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

11.

Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing.

Mailer, Norman

12.

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

13.

Writers are always selling somebody out.

Didion, Joan

14.

The characteristic of Chaucer is intensity: of Spencer, remoteness: of Milton elevation and of Shakespeare everything.

Hazlitt, William

15.

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

16.

You don't write because you want to say something; you write because you've got something to say.

17.

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

18.

The trouble began with Forster. After him it was considered ungentlemanly to write more than five or six novels.

Burgess, Anthony

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

Smith, Dr. Walter

22.

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

Smith, Nancy Banks

23.

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

24.

If you're going to write, don't pretend to write down. It's going to be the best you can do, and it's the fact that it's the best you can do that kills you.

Parker, Dorothy

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.

When all things are equal, translucence in writing is more effective than transparency, just as glow is more revealing than glare.

Thurber, James

27.

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

Gribbon, George

28.

Writing is the incurable itch that possesses many.

Juvenal, (Decimus Junius Juvenalis)

29.

Writers aren't people exactly. Or, if they're any good, they're a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person. It's like actors, who try so pathetically not to look in mirrors. Who lean back ward trying -- only to see their faces in the reflecting chandeliers.

30.

Herman Melville was as separated from a civilized literature as the lost Atlantis was said to have been from the great peoples of the earth.

Dahlberg, Edward

31.

I make no complaint. I am a writer. I do not accept my condition; I will strive to change it; but I inhabit it, I am trying to learn from it.

Rushdie, Salman

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

Zinsser, William

35.

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

36.

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

Singer, Isaac Bashevis

37.

A pathological business, writing, don't you think? Just look what a writer actually does: all that unnatural tense squatting and hunching, all those rituals: pathological!

Enzensberger, Hans Magnus

38.

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

Kesey, Ken

39.

There is no luck in literary reputation. They who make up the final verdict upon every book are not the partial and noisy readers of the hour when it appears; but a court as of angels, a public not to be bribed, not to be entreated, and not to be overawed, decides upon every man's title to fame.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

40.

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

Faulkner, William

41.

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

Steinbeck, John

42.

Great writers are the saints for the godless.

Brookner, Anita

43.

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

Nabokov, Vladimir

44.

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

Steinbeck, John

45.

I love being a writer, what I can't stand is the paperwork.

Vries, Peter De

46.

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

47.

Writing is the continuation of politics by other means.

Sollers, Philippe

48.

If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don't listen to writers talking about writing or themselves.

Hellman, Lillian

49.

The writer who loses his self-doubt, who gives way as he grows old to a sudden euphoria, to prolixity, should stop writing immediately: the time has come for him to lay aside his pen.

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle

50.

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

Fadiman, Clifton