Motivational Quotes

Writers and writing

Writing is thinking on paper.

- Zinsser, William

Best Quotes about Writers and writing

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

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

Corbett, James J.

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

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

Borges, Jorge Luis

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

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

Wilde, Oscar

I can write better than anybody who can write faster, and I can write faster than anybody who can write better.

Liebling, A. J.

I believe that it is my job not only to write books but to have them published. A book is like a child. You have to defend the life of a child.

Konrad, George

The walls are the publishers of the poor.

Galeano, Eduardo

10.

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

Zinsser, William

11.

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

12.

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.

13.

Writing is the incurable itch that possesses many.

Juvenal, (Decimus Junius Juvenalis)

14.

Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence.

Walker, Alice

15.

Writers like teeth are divided into incisors and grinders.

Bagehot, Walter

16.

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

Auden, W. H.

17.

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

18.

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

Doren, Carl Van

19.

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

20.

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

Smith, Nancy Banks

21.

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

Kraus, Karl

22.

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

23.

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

Faulkner, William

24.

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

25.

The need to express oneself in writing springs from a mal-adjustment to life, or from an inner conflict which the adolescent (or the grown man) cannot resolve in action. Those to whom action comes as easily as breathing rarely feel the need to break loose from the real, to rise above, and describe it... I do not mean that it is enough to be maladjusted to become a great writer, but writing is, for some, a method of resolving a conflict, provided they have the necessary talent.

Maurois, Andre

26.

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

James, William

27.

The writer is more concerned to know than to judge.

Maugham, W. Somerset

28.

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

Thurber, James

29.

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

Zinsser, William

30.

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.

31.

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

Steinbeck, John

32.

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

Wilde, Oscar

33.

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

Hemingway, Ernest

34.

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

35.

The last thing we decide in writing a book is what to put first.

Pascal, Blaise

36.

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

Nicolson, Harold

37.

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

Freud, Sigmund

38.

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

39.

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

Murdoch, Iris

40.

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

White, Elwyn Brooks

41.

A writer and nothing else; a man alone in a room with the English language, trying to get human feelings right.

Hutchens, John K.

42.

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

Swift, Jonathan

43.

If the doctor told me I had six minutes to live, I'd type a little faster.

Asimov, Isaac

44.

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

Miller, Olin

45.

He is a man of thirty-five, but looks fifty. He is bald, has varicose veins and wears spectacles, or would wear them if his only pair were not chronically lost. If things are normal with him, he will be suffering from malnutrition, but if he has recently had a lucky streak, he will be suffering from a hangover. At present it is half past eleven in the morning, and according to his schedule he should have started work two hours ago; but even if he had made any serious effort to start he would have been frustrated by the almost continuous ringing of the telephone bell, the yells of the baby, the rattle of an electric drill out in the street, and the heavy boots of his creditors clumping up the stairs. The most recent interruption was the arrival of the second post, which brought him two circulars and an income tax demand printed in red. Needless to say this person is a writer.

Orwell, George

46.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

47.

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

Duncan, Isadora

48.

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

Dennis, Patrick

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.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset