Motivational Quotes

Writers and writing

Every secret of a writer's soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written large in his works.

- Woolf, Virginia

Best Quotes about Writers and writing

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

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.

Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about.

Auden, W. H.

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

Thurber, James

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

The biggest obstacle to professional writing is the necessity for changing a typewriter ribbon.

Benchley, Robert

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

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

Ferber, Edna

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

10.

For a country to have a great writer is like having another government. That's why no r?gime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones.

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander

11.

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.

12.

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

Bach, Richard

13.

If a nation loses its storytellers, it loses its childhood.

Handke, Peter

14.

If I had not existed, someone else would have written me, Hemingway, Dostoevski, all of us.

Faulkner, William

15.

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

Hemingway, Ernest

16.

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

Steinbeck, John

17.

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.

18.

To write is a humiliation.

Dahlberg, Edward

19.

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

Horace

20.

The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.

Vorse, Mary Heaton

21.

Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing.

Mailer, Norman

22.

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.

23.

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

Hemingway, Ernest

24.

Great writers arrive among us like new diseases -- threatening, powerful, impatient for patients to pick up their virus, irresistible.

Raine, Craig

25.

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

Dyer, Wayne

26.

The secret of all good writing is sound judgment.

Horace

27.

The walls are the publishers of the poor.

Galeano, Eduardo

28.

You enter a state of controlled passivity, you relax your grip and accept that even if your declared intention is to justify the ways of God to man, you might end up interesting your readers rather more in Satan.

Mcewan, Ian

29.

Style and Structure are the essence of a book; great ideas are hogwash.

Nabokov, Vladimir

30.

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.

Franklin, Benjamin

31.

Manuscript: something submitted in haste and returned at leisure.

Herford, Oliver

32.

I am always interested in why young people become writers, and from talking with many I have concluded that most do not want to be writers working eight and ten hours a day and accomplishing little; they want to have been writers, garnering the rewards of having completed a best-seller. They aspire to the rewards of writing but not to the travail.

Michener, James A.

33.

There is no luck in literary reputation. They who make up the final verdict upon every book are not the partial and noisy readers of the hour when it appears; but a court as of angels, a public not to be bribed, not to be entreated, and not to be overawed, decides upon every man's title to fame.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

34.

It is rarely that you see an American writer who is not hopelessly sane.

Anderson, Margaret

35.

The free-lance writer is a man who is paid per piece or per word or perhaps.

Benchley, Robert

36.

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

Nunn, Gregory

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

Martin, Judith

40.

The hard necessity of bringing the judge on the bench down into the dock has been the peculiar responsibility of the writer in all ages of man.

Algren, Nelson

41.

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

Gribbon, George

42.

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

Joyce, James

43.

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

Nicolson, Harold

44.

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

45.

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

46.

If you wish to be a writer; write!

Epictetus

47.

The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and about all time.

Shaw, George Bernard

48.

Every secret of a writer's soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written large in his works.

Woolf, Virginia

49.

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