Motivational Quotes

Writers and writing

Let's face it, writing is hell.

- Styron, William

Best Quotes about Writers and writing

He is outside of everything, and alien everywhere. He is an aesthetic solitary. His beautiful, light imagination is the wing that on the autumn evening just brushes the dusky window.

James, Henry

Writing isn't hard. It isn't any harder than ditch-digging.

Dennis, Patrick

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

Martin, Judith

Whores and writers, Mahound. We are the people you can't forgive.

Rushdie, Salman

The writer is more concerned to know than to judge.

Maugham, W. Somerset

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

Liebling, A. J.

The ambivalence of writing is such that it can be considered both an act and an interpretive process that follows after an act with which it cannot coincide. As such, it both affirms and denies its own nature.

Man, Paul De

If any man wishes to write a clear style, let him first be clear in his thoughts.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

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

10.

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

Hemingway, Ernest

11.

Writing is not like painting where you add. It is not what you put on the canvas that the reader sees. Writing is more like a sculpture where you remove, you eliminate in order to make the work visible. Even those pages you remove somehow remain.

Wiesel, Elie

12.

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

Faulkner, William

13.

The process of writing has something infinite about it. Even though it is interrupted each night, it is one single notation.

Canetti, Elias

14.

Practically everybody in New York has half a mind to write a book, and does.

Marx, Groucho

15.

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

16.

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.

17.

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

18.

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

19.

Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them.

O'Connor, Flannery

20.

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

21.

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.

22.

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

Kraus, Karl

23.

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

24.

Writing is a craft not an art.

Zinsser, William

25.

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

Marquez, Gabriel Garcia

26.

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

27.

If you wish to be a writer; write!

Epictetus

28.

The discipline of the written word punishes both stupidity and dishonesty.

Steinbeck, John

29.

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

30.

Yes, it's hard to write, but it's harder not to.

Doren, Carl Van

31.

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.

Franklin, Benjamin

32.

The best way to become a successful writer is to read good writing, remember it, and then forget where you remember it from.

Fowler, Gene

33.

His style is chaos illumined by flashes of lightning. As a writer he has mastered everything except language.

Wilde, Oscar

34.

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

Rosten, Leo

35.

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

36.

If you describe things as better than they are, you are considered to be a romantic; if you describe things as worse than they are, you will be called a realist; and if you describe things exactly as they are, you will be thought of as a satirist.

Crisp, Quentin

37.

Fundamentally, all writing is about the same thing; it's about dying, about the brief flicker of time we have here, and the frustration that it creates.

Richler, Mordecai

38.

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

39.

A book should be luminous not voluminous.

Bovee, Christian Nevell

40.

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

Gribbon, George

41.

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

Thurber, James

42.

Books choose their authors; the act of creation is not entirely a rational and conscious one.

Rushdie, Salman

43.

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

44.

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

Bennett, Arnold

45.

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

Smith, Logan Pearsall

46.

An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmasters of ever afterwards.

47.

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

Pound, Ezra

48.

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

49.

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

50.

Writing ought either to be the manufacture of stories for which there is a market demand -- a business as safe and commendable as making soap or breakfast foods -- or it should be an art, which is always a search for something for which there is no market demand, something new and untried, where the values are intrinsic and have nothing to do with standardized values.

Cather, Willa