Motivational Quotes

Writers and writing

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

- Sontag, Susan

Best Quotes about Writers and writing

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

Ellman, Lucy

I believe that it is my job not only to write books but to have them published. A book is like a child. You have to defend the life of a child.

Konrad, George

Writing is thinking on paper.

Zinsser, William

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

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

Pascal, Blaise

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

The writer is more concerned to know than to judge.

Maugham, W. Somerset

The responsibility of a writer is to excavate the experience of the people who produced him.

Baldwin, James

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

Murdoch, Iris

10.

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

11.

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

Nicolson, Harold

12.

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

Fadiman, Clifton

13.

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

14.

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

Anderson, Margaret

15.

Like stones, words are laborious and unforgiving, and the fitting of them together, like the fitting of stones, demands great patience and strength of purpose and particular skill.

Morrison, Edmund

16.

When writers meet they are truculent, indifferent, or over-polite. Then comes the inevitable moment. A shows B that he has read something of B s. Will B show A? If not, then A hates B, if yes, then all is well. The only other way for writers to meet is to share a quick pee over a common lamp-post.

Connolly, Cyril

17.

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

Hemingway, Ernest

18.

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

Hellman, Lillian

19.

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

20.

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

Handke, Peter

21.

Writing crystallizes thought and thought produces action.

Meyer, Paul J.

22.

If written directions alone would suffice, libraries wouldn't need to have the rest of the universities attached.

Martin, Judith

23.

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

Smith, Nancy Banks

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.

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

26.

The only living works are those which have drained much of the author's own life into them.

Butler, Samuel

27.

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

28.

Good writing excites me, and makes life worth living.

Pinter, Harold

29.

My idea is always to reach my generation. The wise writer writes for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmasters of ever afterward.

30.

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

Smith, Logan Pearsall

31.

A writer and nothing else; a man alone in a room with the English language, trying to get human feelings right.

Hutchens, John K.

32.

A writer is a person who has solutions for which there are no riddles.

Nunn, Gregory

33.

The secret of all good writing is sound judgment.

Horace

34.

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

Hemingway, Ernest

35.

After all, most writing is done away from the typewriter, away from the desk. I'd say it occurs in the quiet, silent moments, while you're walking or shaving or playing a game, or whatever, or even talking to someone you're not vitally interested in.

Miller, Henry

36.

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

37.

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

Liebling, A. J.

38.

Great writers are the saints for the godless.

Brookner, Anita

39.

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

Steinbeck, John

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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.

43.

A great writer creates a world of his own and his readers are proud to live in it. A lesser writer may entice them in for a moment, but soon he will watch them filing out.

Connolly, Cyril

44.

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

45.

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

Zinsser, William

46.

Writers like teeth are divided into incisors and grinders.

Bagehot, Walter

47.

I was brought up in the great tradition of the late nineteenth century: that a writer never complains, never explains and never disdains.

Michener, James A.

48.

Each writer is born with a repertory company in his head. Shakespeare has perhaps 20 players, and Tennessee Williams has about 5, and Samuel Beckett one -- and maybe a clone of that one. I have 10 or so, and that's a lot. As you get older, you become more skillful at casting them.

Vidal, Gore

49.

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

Pascal, Blaise

50.

You enter a state of controlled passivity, you relax your grip and accept that even if your declared intention is to justify the ways of God to man, you might end up interesting your readers rather more in Satan.

Mcewan, Ian