Motivational Quotes

Writers and writing

I was in a queer mood, thinking myself very old: but now I am a woman again -- as I always am when I write.

- Woolf, Virginia

Best Quotes about Writers and writing

Manuscript: something submitted in haste and returned at leisure.

Herford, Oliver

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

Wilde, Oscar

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

Rushdie, Salman

In a sense the world dies every time a writer dies, because, if he is any good, he has been a wet nurse to humanity during his entire existence and has held earth close around him, like the little obstetrical toad that goes about with a cluster of eggs attached to his legs.

White, Elwyn Brooks

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.

Franklin, Benjamin

I make no complaint. I am a writer. I do not accept my condition; I will strive to change it; but I inhabit it, I am trying to learn from it.

Rushdie, Salman

The writer is more concerned to know than to judge.

Maugham, W. Somerset

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

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

Johnson, Samuel

10.

Whores and writers, Mahound. We are the people you can't forgive.

Rushdie, Salman

11.

An author who speaks about his own books is almost as bad as a mother who talks about her own children.

Disraeli, Benjamin

12.

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

13.

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

Woolf, Virginia

14.

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

Kraus, Karl

15.

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

Hemingway, Ernest

16.

For your born writer, nothing is so healing as the realization that he has come upon the right word.

Bowen, Catherine Drinker

17.

A word is a bud attempting to become a twig. How can one not dream while writing? It is the pen which dreams. The blank page gives the right to dream.

Bachelard, Gaston

18.

Clutter is the disease of American writing. We are a society strangling in unnecessary words, circular constructions, pompous frills and meaningless jargon.

Zinsser, William

19.

Most bad books get that way because their authors are engaged in trying to justify themselves. If a vain author is an alcoholic, then the most sympathetically portrayed character in his book will be an alcoholic. This sort of thing is very boring for outsiders.

Vizinczey, Stephen

20.

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

Thurber, James

21.

Every writing career starts as a personal quest for sainthood, for self-betterment. Sooner or later, and as a rule quite soon, a man discovers that his pen accomplishes a lot more than his soul.

Brodsky, Joseph

22.

I am paid by the word, so I always write the shortest words possible.

Russell, Bertrand

23.

Good writing excites me, and makes life worth living.

Pinter, Harold

24.

Writing is the hardest way of earning a living, with the possible exception of wrestling alligators.

Miller, Olin

25.

Who wants to become a writer? And why? Because it's the answer to everything. To Why am I here? To uselessness. It's the streaming reason for living. To note, to pin down, to build up, to create, to be astonished at nothing, to cherish the oddities, to let nothing go down the drain, to make something, to make a great flower out of life, even if it's a cactus.

Bagnold, Enid

26.

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

27.

Writing is conscience, scruple, and the farming of our ancestors.

Dahlberg, Edward

28.

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

29.

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

30.

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.

31.

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

32.

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.

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.

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

35.

A book should be luminous not voluminous.

Bovee, Christian Nevell

36.

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

37.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

38.

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

Singer, Isaac Bashevis

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

White, Elwyn Brooks

42.

Footnotes -- little dogs yapping at the heels of the text

James, William

43.

Paper and ink are all but trash, if I cannot find the thought which the writer did think.

Smith, Dr. Walter

44.

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

45.

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

Bennett, Arnold

46.

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

Hemingway, Ernest

47.

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

Butler, Samuel

48.

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