Motivational Quotes

Writers and writing

Writing is the continuation of politics by other means.

- Sollers, Philippe

Best Quotes about Writers and writing

The creations of a great writer are little more than the moods and passions of his own heart, given surnames and Christian names, and sent to walk the earth.

Yeats, William Butler

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.

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

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

Hellman, Lillian

Writing is a question of finding a certain rhythm. I compare it to the rhythms of jazz. Much of the time life is a sort of rhythmic progression of three characters. If one tells oneself that life is like that, one feels it less arbitrary.

Sagan, Francoise

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

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

Handke, Peter

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

Thurber, James

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

10.

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

Marquis, Don

11.

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.

Franklin, Benjamin

12.

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

Vries, Peter De

13.

Essential characteristic of the really great novelist: a Christ-like, all-embracing compassion.

Bennett, Arnold

14.

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.

15.

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

16.

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

Kesey, Ken

17.

Hard writing makes easy reading. Easy writing makes hard reading.

Zinsser, William

18.

I'm the kind of writer that people think other people are reading.

Naipaul, V. S.

19.

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

Twain, Mark

20.

Easy writings curse is hard reading.

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley

21.

A man writes to throw off the poison which he has accumulated because of his false way of life. He is trying to recapture his innocence, yet all he succeeds in doing (by writing) is to inoculate the world with a virus of his disillusionment. No man would set a word down on paper if he had the courage to live out what he believed in.

Miller, Henry

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

Ferber, Edna

25.

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

26.

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

Shaw, Irwin

27.

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

Rosten, Leo

28.

Work on good prose has three steps: a musical stage when it is composed, an architectonic one when it is built, and a textile one when it is woven.

Benjamin, Walter

29.

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

Faulkner, William

30.

Manuscript: something submitted in haste and returned at leisure.

Herford, Oliver

31.

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

Smith, Nancy Banks

32.

Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence.

Walker, Alice

33.

Like all writers, he measured the achievements of others by what they had accomplished, asking of them that they measure him by what he envisaged or planned.

Borges, Jorge Luis

34.

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

35.

The trouble with young writers is that they are all in their sixties.

Maugham, W. Somerset

36.

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

Boileau, Nicholas

37.

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

Singer, Isaac Bashevis

38.

In a sense the world dies every time a writer dies, because, if he is any good, he has been a wet nurse to humanity during his entire existence and has held earth close around him, like the little obstetrical toad that goes about with a cluster of eggs attached to his legs.

White, Elwyn Brooks

39.

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

40.

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

Dyer, Wayne

41.

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

42.

Often I think writing is a sheer paring away of oneself leaving always something thinner, barer, more meager.

43.

Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over.

Hemingway, Ernest

44.

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

45.

This morning I took out a comma and this afternoon I put it back in again.

Wilde, Oscar

46.

The hard necessity of bringing the judge on the bench down into the dock has been the peculiar responsibility of the writer in all ages of man.

Algren, Nelson

47.

Let's face it, writing is hell.

Styron, William

48.

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

Ellman, Lucy

49.

Writing is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, then it becomes a master, then it becomes a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster and fling him to the public.

Churchill, Winston

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