Motivational Quotes

Writers and writing

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

- Murdoch, Iris

Best Quotes about Writers and writing

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

I like to write when I feel spiteful. It is like having a good sneeze.

Lawrence, D. H.

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

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

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

Doren, Carl Van

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.

Franklin, Benjamin

A great writer creates a world of his own and his readers are proud to live in it. A lesser writer may entice them in for a moment, but soon he will watch them filing out.

Connolly, Cyril

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

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

10.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

11.

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

Joyce, James

12.

You must often make erasures if you mean to write what is worthy of being read a second time; and don't labor for the admiration of the crowd, but be content with a few choice readers.

Horace

13.

What an occupation! To sit and flay your fellow men and then offer their skins for sale and expect them to buy them.

Strindberg, J. August

14.

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

Smith, Logan Pearsall

15.

Writers are a little below the clowns and a little above the trained seals.

Steinbeck, John

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

19.

It is excellent discipline for an author to feel that he must say all that he has to say in the fewest possible words, or his readers is sure to skip them.

Ruskin, John

20.

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

Johnson, Samuel

21.

The secret of all good writing is sound judgment.

Horace

22.

The trouble with young writers is that they are all in their sixties.

Maugham, W. Somerset

23.

If you wish to be a writer; write!

Epictetus

24.

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

Wilde, Oscar

25.

Easy writings curse is hard reading.

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley

26.

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

Dyer, Wayne

27.

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

Kraus, Karl

28.

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

29.

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

James, William

30.

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

Horace

31.

Four basic premises of writing: clarity, brevity, simplicity, and humanity.

Zinsser, William

32.

Writing is thinking on paper.

Zinsser, William

33.

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.

34.

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

Pound, Ezra

35.

The cure for writers cramp is writer's block.

Leon, Inigo de

36.

I write in order to attain that feeling of tension relieved and function achieved which a cow enjoys on giving milk.

Mencken, H. L.

37.

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

Bennett, Arnold

38.

Great writers are the saints for the godless.

Brookner, Anita

39.

Writing is to descend like a miner to the depths of the mine with a lamp on your forehead, a light whose dubious brightness falsifies everything, whose wick is in permanent danger of explosion, whose blinking illumination in the coal dust exhausts and corrodes your eyes.

Sauser, Blaise Cendrars

40.

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

41.

The moving finger writes, and having written moves on. Nor all thy piety nor all thy wit, can cancel half a line of it.

Khayyam, Omar

42.

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

43.

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

44.

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.

45.

Writing is a craft not an art.

Zinsser, William

46.

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

47.

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

Naipaul, V. S.

48.

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

Russell, Bertrand

49.

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

Hemingway, Ernest

50.

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