Motivational Quotes

Writers and writing

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

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

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.

Writing is the incurable itch that possesses many.

Juvenal, (Decimus Junius Juvenalis)

If I don't write to empty my mind, I go mad. As to that regular, uninterrupted love of writing. I do not understand it. I feel it as a torture, which I must get rid of, but never as a pleasure. On the contrary, I think composition a great pain.

Byron, Lord

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

White, Elwyn Brooks

I never think when I write. Nobody can do two things at the same time and do them well.

Marquis, Don

Whiskey has killed more men than bullets, but most men would rather be full of whiskey than bullets. What I like in a good author is not what he says, but what he whispers.

Smith, Logan Pearsall

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

Lewis, Cecil Day

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

10.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

11.

The secret of all good writing is sound judgment.

Horace

12.

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

Liebling, A. J.

13.

The cure for writers cramp is writer's block.

Leon, Inigo de

14.

The future author is one who discovers that language, the exploration and manipulation of the resources of language, will serve him in winning through to his way.

Wilder, Thornton

15.

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

16.

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

Hutchens, John K.

17.

I was brought up in the great tradition of the late nineteenth century: that a writer never complains, never explains and never disdains.

Michener, James A.

18.

It's hard enough to write a good drama, it's much harder to write a good comedy, and it's hardest of all to write a drama with comedy. Which is what life is.

Lemmon, Jack

19.

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.

Franklin, Benjamin

20.

In most cases a favorite writer is more with us in his book than he ever could have been in the flesh; since, being a writer, he is one who has studied and perfected this particular mode of personal incarnation, very likely to the detriment of any other. I should like as a matter of curiosity to see and hear for a moment the men whose works I admire; but I should hardly expect to find further intercourse particularly profitable.

Cooley, Charles Horton

21.

The writing of the wise are the only riches our posterity cannot squander.

Landor, Walter Savage

22.

The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof, shit detector. This is the writer's radar and all great writers have had it.

Hemingway, Ernest

23.

He who cannot limit himself will never know how to write.

Boileau, Nicholas

24.

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

25.

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

26.

People want to know why I do this, why I write such gross stuff. I like to tell them that I have the heart of a small boy -- and I keep it in a jar on my desk.

King, Stephen

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

30.

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

31.

The writer probably knows what he meant when he wrote a book, but he should immediately forget what he meant when he's written it.

Golding, William

32.

The shelf life of the modern hardback writer is somewhere between the milk and the yogurt.

Mortimer, John

33.

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

34.

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

Freud, Sigmund

35.

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

36.

They're fancy talkers about themselves, writers. If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don't listen to writers talking about writing or themselves.

Hellman, Lillian

37.

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

Hemingway, Ernest

38.

Writing is the continuation of politics by other means.

Sollers, Philippe

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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.

43.

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

Hazlitt, William

44.

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

Duncan, Isadora

45.

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

Vries, Peter De

46.

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

Sontag, Susan

47.

The first thing an unpublished author should remember is that no one asked him to write in the first place. With this firmly in mind, he has no right to become discouraged just because other people are being published.

Farrar, John

48.

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

Hemingway, Ernest

49.

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

Anderson, Margaret

50.

Writing is thinking on paper.

Zinsser, William