Motivational Quotes

Writers and writing

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

Best Quotes about Writers and writing

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.

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

Thurber, James

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

Wilde, Oscar

Manuscript: something submitted in haste and returned at leisure.

Herford, Oliver

Writing is the continuation of politics by other means.

Sollers, Philippe

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

The creations of a great writer are little more than the moods and passions of his own heart, given surnames and Christian names, and sent to walk the earth.

Yeats, William Butler

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

No pen, no ink, no table, no room, no time, no quiet, no inclination.

Joyce, James

10.

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

Martin, Judith

11.

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

12.

Of the creative spirits that flourished in Concord, Massachusetts, during the middle of the nineteenth century, it might be said that Hawthorne loved men but felt estranged from them, Emerson loved ideas even more than men, and Thoreau loved himself.

Edel, Leon

13.

Writers, you know, are the beggars of Western society.

Paz, Octavio

14.

Let's face it, writing is hell.

Styron, William

15.

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

Nunn, Gregory

16.

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

Canetti, Elias

17.

I love being a writer, what I can't stand is the paperwork.

Vries, Peter De

18.

To write is a humiliation.

Dahlberg, Edward

19.

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

20.

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

Fadiman, Clifton

21.

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

22.

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

23.

Good writing is clear thinking made visible.

Wheeler, Bill

24.

The writer's language is to some degree the product of his own action; he is both the historian and the agent of his own language.

Man, Paul De

25.

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

26.

Writers seldom choose as friends those self-contained characters who are never in trouble, never unhappy or ill, never make mistakes, and always count their change when it is handed to them.

Bowen, Catherine Drinker

27.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

28.

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

Shaw, Irwin

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.

They can't yank a novelist like they can a pitcher. A novelist has to go the full nine, even if it kills him.

Hemingway, Ernest

31.

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

32.

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.

Franklin, Benjamin

33.

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

Hemingway, Ernest

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

Baldwin, James

37.

The only way out is the way through, just as you cannot escape from death except by dying. Being unable to write, you must examine in writing this being unable, which becomes for the present -- henceforth? -- the subject to which you are condemned.

Nemerov, Howard

38.

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

Orwell, George

39.

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

Corbett, James J.

40.

Every writer creates his own precursors. His work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify the future.

Borges, Jorge Luis

41.

To endow the writer publicly with a good fleshly body, to reveal that he likes dry white wine and underdone steak, is to make even more miraculous for me, and of a more divine essence, the products of his art. Far from the details of his daily life bringing nearer to me the nature of his inspiration and making it clearer, it is the whole mystical singularity of his condition which the writer emphasizes by such confidences. For I cannot but ascribe to some superhumanly the existence of beings vast enough to wear blue pajamas at the very moment when they manifest themselves as universal conscience.

Barthes, Roland

42.

I think of an author as somebody who goes into the marketplace and puts down his rug and says, I will tell you a story, and then he passes the hat.

Davies, Robertson

43.

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

Lewis, Cecil Day

44.

Good writing excites me, and makes life worth living.

Pinter, Harold

45.

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

Dennis, Patrick

46.

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

Butler, Samuel

47.

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

Ellman, Lucy

48.

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

49.

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

Murdoch, Iris

50.

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

Hemingway, Ernest