Motivational Quotes

Writers and writing

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

- Thurber, James

Best Quotes about Writers and writing

Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing.

Mailer, Norman

A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit.

Bach, Richard

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

Martin, Judith

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

Writing is a craft not an art.

Zinsser, William

I think it's bad to talk about one's present work, for it spoils something at the root of the creative act. It discharges the tension.

Mailer, Norman

But this I know; the writer who possesses the creative gift owns something of which he is not always master -- something that at times strangely wills and works for itself. If the result be attractive, the World will praise you, who little deserve praise; if it be repulsive, the same World will blame you, who almost as little deserve blame.

Bronte, Charlotte

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

Corbett, James J.

Writing is turning one's worst moments into money.

Donleavy, J. P.

10.

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

Steinbeck, John

11.

Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar.

White, Elwyn Brooks

12.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

13.

The trade of authorship is a violent, and indestructible obsession.

Sand, George

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

Johnson, Samuel

17.

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

Nunn, Gregory

18.

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

19.

No poet or novelist wishes he were the only one who ever lived, but most of them wish they were the only one alive, and quite a number fondly believe their wish has been granted.

Auden, W. H.

20.

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

Smith, Nancy Banks

21.

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

Dyer, Wayne

22.

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

23.

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.

24.

Manuscript: something submitted in haste and returned at leisure.

Herford, Oliver

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.

Writers and politicians are natural rivals. Both groups try to make the world in their own images; they fight for the same territory.

Rushdie, Salman

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

Singer, Isaac Bashevis

33.

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

Steinbeck, John

34.

The secret of all good writing is sound judgment.

Horace

35.

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

Smith, Logan Pearsall

36.

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

Marx, Groucho

37.

Writing crystallizes thought and thought produces action.

Meyer, Paul J.

38.

For a creative writer possession of the truth is less important than emotional sincerity.

Orwell, George

39.

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

Doren, Carl Van

40.

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

Hutchens, John K.

41.

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.

42.

It's hard enough to write a good drama, it's much harder to write a good comedy, and it's hardest of all to write a drama with comedy. Which is what life is.

Lemmon, Jack

43.

No doubt I shall go on writing, stumbling across tundras of unmeaning, planting words like bloody flags in my wake. Loose ends, things unrelated, shifts, nightmare journeys, cities arrived at and left, meetings, desertions, betrayals, all manner of unions, adulteries, triumphs, defeats... these are the facts.

Trocchi, Alexander

44.

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

Burgess, Anthony

45.

We do not write in order to be understood; we write in order to understand.

Lewis, Cecil Day

46.

The writer must write what he has to say, not speak it.

Hemingway, Ernest

47.

It requires more than mere genius to be an author.

La Bruyere, Jean De

48.

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

Kraus, Karl

49.

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

Hemingway, Ernest

50.

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