Motivational Quotes

Writers and writing

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.

Famous Inspirational Daily Quotes

Best Quotes about Writers and writing

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

Martin, Judith

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

Pascal, Blaise

A writer writes not because he is educated but because he is driven by the need to communicate. Behind the need to communicate is the need to share. Behind the need to share is the need to be understood. The writer wants to be understood much more than he wants to be respected or praised or even loved. And that perhaps, is what makes him different from others.

Rosten, Leo

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

Ferber, Edna

The writer's only responsibility is to his art. He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one. He has a dream. Everything goes by the board: honor, pride, decency, security, happiness, all, to get the book written. 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

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

Zinsser, William

My own experience has been that the tools I need for my trade are paper, tobacco, food, and a little whisky.

Faulkner, William

Only amateurs say that they write for their own amusement. Writing is not an amusing occupation. It is a combination of ditch-digging, mountain-climbing, treadmill and childbirth. Writing may be interesting, absorbing, exhilarating, racking, relieving. But amusing? Never!

Ferber, Edna

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

Smith, Logan Pearsall

10.

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

11.

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

Faulkner, William

12.

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

Thurber, James

13.

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.

14.

Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don't feel I should be doing something else.

Steinem, Gloria

15.

The characteristic of Chaucer is intensity: of Spencer, remoteness: of Milton elevation and of Shakespeare everything.

Hazlitt, William

16.

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

Corbett, James J.

17.

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

Kraus, Karl

18.

The more books we read, the clearer it becomes that the true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece and that no other task is of any consequence.

Connolly, Cyril

19.

Style may defined as the proper words in the proper places.

Swift, Jonathan

20.

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

Burgess, Anthony

21.

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

Smith, Nancy Banks

22.

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

Canetti, Elias

23.

All writers are vain, selfish and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives lies a mystery. Writing a book is a long, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.

Orwell, George

24.

Writing is turning one's worst moments into money.

Donleavy, J. P.

25.

Creative writers are always greater than the causes that they represent.

Forster, Edward M.

26.

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

27.

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

Nicolson, Harold

28.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

29.

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

Hemingway, Ernest

30.

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

31.

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

Steinbeck, John

32.

There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately no one knows what they are.

Maugham, W. Somerset

33.

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

34.

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

Bennett, Arnold

35.

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

Sontag, Susan

36.

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

37.

Nothing written for pay is worth printing. Only what has been written against the market.

Pound, Ezra

38.

Good authors, too, who once knew better words now only use four-letter words writing prose... anything goes.

Porter, Cole

39.

O Grub Street! how do I bemoan thee, whose graceless children scorn to own thee! . Yet thou hast greater cause to be ashamed of them, than they of thee.

Swift, Jonathan

40.

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

Murdoch, Iris

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

Singer, Isaac Bashevis

45.

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

46.

A book should be luminous not voluminous.

Bovee, Christian Nevell

47.

The first essential in writing about anything is that the writer should have no experience of the matter.

Duncan, Isadora

48.

To withdraw myself from myself has ever been my sole, my entire, my sincere motive in scribbling at all.

Byron, Lord

49.

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

50.

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