Motivational Quotes

Writers and writing

Writing ought either to be the manufacture of stories for which there is a market demand -- a business as safe and commendable as making soap or breakfast foods -- or it should be an art, which is always a search for something for which there is no market demand, something new and untried, where the values are intrinsic and have nothing to do with standardized values.

- Cather, Willa

Best Quotes about Writers and writing

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

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

As to the adjective, when in doubt strike it out.

Twain, Mark

What I like in a good author isn't what he says, but what he whispers.

Smith, Logan Pearsall

Of course I'm a black writer. I'm not just a black writer, but categories like black writer, woman writer and Latin American writer aren't marginal anymore. We have to acknowledge that the thing we call literature is more pluralistic now, just as society ought to be. The melting pot never worked. We ought to be able to accept on equal terms everybody from the Hasidim to Walter Lippmann, from the Rastafarians to Ralph Bunche.

Morrison, Toni

What has a writer to be bombastic about? Whatever good a man may write is the consequence of accident, luck, or surprise, and nobody is more surprised than an honest writer when he makes a good phrase or says something truthful.

Dahlberg, Edward

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

Hutchens, John K.

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

Liebling, A. J.

Any man who can write a page of living prose adds something to our life, and the man who can, as I can, is surely the last to resent someone who can do it even better. An artist cannot deny art, nor would he want to. A lover cannot deny love.

Chandler, Raymond

10.

The trade of authorship is a violent, and indestructible obsession.

Sand, George

11.

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

12.

The writer is more concerned to know than to judge.

Maugham, W. Somerset

13.

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

Anderson, Margaret

14.

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

Butler, Samuel

15.

Let's face it, writing is hell.

Styron, William

16.

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

17.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

18.

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

Dyer, Wayne

19.

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

20.

The walls are the publishers of the poor.

Galeano, Eduardo

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

Johnson, Samuel

24.

If you want to be a writer-stop talking about it and sit down and write!

Collins, Jackie

25.

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

26.

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

Wilde, Oscar

27.

Often I think writing is a sheer paring away of oneself leaving always something thinner, barer, more meager.

28.

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

Freud, Sigmund

29.

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

Auden, W. H.

30.

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

31.

Writing is turning one's worst moments into money.

Donleavy, J. P.

32.

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

Fadiman, Clifton

33.

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

34.

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

35.

My own experience has been that the tools I need for my trade are paper, tobacco, food, and a little whisky.

Faulkner, William

36.

I'm the kind of writer that people think other people are reading.

Naipaul, V. S.

37.

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

Vries, Peter De

38.

Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don't feel I should be doing something else.

Steinem, Gloria

39.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

40.

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

Landor, Walter Savage

41.

If I had more time I would write a shorter letter.

Pascal, Blaise

42.

Nothing written for pay is worth printing. Only what has been written against the market.

Pound, Ezra

43.

Good writers are those who keep the language efficient. That is to say, keep it accurate, keep it clear.

Pound, Ezra

44.

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

45.

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

Bennett, Arnold

46.

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

Rushdie, Salman

47.

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

Hemingway, Ernest

48.

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

Zinsser, William

49.

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

Nunn, Gregory

50.

Good writing excites me, and makes life worth living.

Pinter, Harold