Motivational Quotes

Writers and writing

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

Famous Inspirational Daily Quotes

Best Quotes about Writers and writing

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

Rosten, Leo

Writers must fortify themselves with pride and egotism as best they can. The process is analogous to using sandbags and loose timbers to protect a house against flood. Writers are vulnerable creatures like anyone else. For what do they have in reality? Not sandbags, not timbers. Just a flimsy reputation and a name.

Aldiss, Brian

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

Let your literary compositions be kept from the public eye for nine years.

Horace

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

Hellman, Lillian

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

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.

To write is a humiliation.

Dahlberg, Edward

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

10.

The writer isn't made in a vacuum. Writers are witnesses. The reason we need writers is because we need witnesses to this terrifying century.

Doctorow, E. L.

11.

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

12.

The best emotions to write out of are anger and fear or dread. The least energizing emotion to write out of is admiration. It is very difficult to write out of because the basic feeling that goes with admiration is a passive contemplative mood.

Sontag, Susan

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

Sand, George

16.

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

Pound, Ezra

17.

A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.

Woolf, Virginia

18.

Any writer, I suppose, feels that the world into which he was born is nothing less than a conspiracy against the cultivation of his talent.

Baldwin, James

19.

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

Bach, Richard

20.

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

21.

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

Canetti, Elias

22.

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

23.

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

24.

Writers like teeth are divided into incisors and grinders.

Bagehot, Walter

25.

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

Wilde, Oscar

26.

You expect far too much of a first sentence. Think of it as analogous to a good country breakfast: what we want is something simple, but nourishing to the imagination. Hold the philosophy, hold the adjectives, just give us a plain subject and verb and perhaps a wholesome, nonfattening adverb or two.

Mcmurtry, Larry

27.

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

Rushdie, Salman

28.

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

Fadiman, Clifton

29.

I would love to spend all my time writing to you; I'd love to share with you all that goes through my mind, all that weighs on my heart, all that gives air to my soul; phantoms of art, dreams that would be so beautiful if they could come true.

Pirandello, Luigi

30.

Writing is more than anything a compulsion, like some people wash their hands thirty times a day for fear of awful consequences if they do not. It pays a whole lot better than this type of compulsion, but it is no more heroic.

Burchill, Julie

31.

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

32.

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.

33.

The secret of all good writing is sound judgment.

Horace

34.

All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.

35.

If I don't write to empty my mind, I go mad. As to that regular, uninterrupted love of writing. I do not understand it. I feel it as a torture, which I must get rid of, but never as a pleasure. On the contrary, I think composition a great pain.

Byron, Lord

36.

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

Shaw, Irwin

37.

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

Gribbon, George

38.

I write in order to attain that feeling of tension relieved and function achieved which a cow enjoys on giving milk.

Mencken, H. L.

39.

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

40.

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

Corbett, James J.

41.

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

Boileau, Nicholas

42.

From the point of view of literature Mr. Kipling is a genius who drops his aspirates. From the point of view of life, he is a reporter who knows vulgarity better than any one has ever known it.

Wilde, Oscar

43.

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

44.

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

Dyer, Wayne

45.

Although most of us know Vincent van Gogh in Arles and Paul Gauguin in Tahiti as if they were neighbors -- somewhat disreputable but endlessly fascinating -- none of us can name two French generals or department store owners of that period. I take enormous pride in considering myself an artist, one of the necessaries.

Michener, James A.

46.

Analogies, it is true, decide nothing, but they can make one feel more at home.

Freud, Sigmund

47.

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

48.

Habits in writing as in life are only useful if they are broken as soon as they cease to be advantageous.

Maugham, W. Somerset

49.

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.

50.

We are nauseated by the sight of trivial personalities decomposing in the eternity of print.

Woolf, Virginia