Motivational Quotes

Writers and writing

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

- Mencken, H. L.

Best Quotes about Writers and writing

This is something that I cannot get over -- that a whole line could be written by half a man, that a work could be built on the quicksand of a character.

Kraus, Karl

As a man has no right to kill one of his children if it is diseased or insane, so a man who has made the gradual and conscious expression of his personality in literature the aim of his life, has no right to suppress himself any carefully considered work which seemed good enough when it was written. Suppression, if it is deserved, will come rapidly enough from the same causes that suppress the unworthy members of a man's family.

Synge, J. M.

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

Rushdie, Salman

Good writing is clear thinking made visible.

Wheeler, Bill

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

Maugham, W. Somerset

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

The writer who loses his self-doubt, who gives way as he grows old to a sudden euphoria, to prolixity, should stop writing immediately: the time has come for him to lay aside his pen.

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle

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

Joyce, James

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

10.

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

11.

Writing is turning one's worst moments into money.

Donleavy, J. P.

12.

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

Thurber, James

13.

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

Faulkner, William

14.

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

15.

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

16.

Manuscript: something submitted in haste and returned at leisure.

Herford, Oliver

17.

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

18.

One reason writers write is out of revenge. Life hurts; certain ideas and experiences hurt; one wants to clarify, to set out illuminations, to replay the old bad scenes and get the Treppenworte said -- the words one didn't have the strength or ripeness to say when those words were necessary for one's dignity or survival.

Ozick, Cynthia

19.

You don't write because you want to say something; you write because you've got something to say.

20.

You can fire your secretary, divorce your spouse, abandon your children. But they remain your co-authors forever.

Goodman, Ellen

21.

If you wish to be a writer; write!

Epictetus

22.

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

23.

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

Vries, Peter De

24.

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

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

28.

The best emotions to write out of are anger and fear or dread. The least energizing emotion to write out of is admiration. It is very difficult to write out of because the basic feeling that goes with admiration is a passive contemplative mood.

Sontag, Susan

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

Russell, Bertrand

32.

He is outside of everything, and alien everywhere. He is an aesthetic solitary. His beautiful, light imagination is the wing that on the autumn evening just brushes the dusky window.

James, Henry

33.

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

Duncan, Isadora

34.

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

35.

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

Freud, Sigmund

36.

Who often, but without success, have prayed for apt Alliteration's artful aid.

Churchill, Charles

37.

Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing.

Mailer, Norman

38.

Writing is a craft not an art.

Zinsser, William

39.

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

Smith, Dr. Walter

40.

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

Zinsser, William

41.

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

Mencken, H. L.

42.

To withdraw myself from myself has ever been my sole, my entire, my sincere motive in scribbling at all.

Byron, Lord

43.

Good writing excites me, and makes life worth living.

Pinter, Harold

44.

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

Asimov, Isaac

45.

Easy writings curse is hard reading.

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley

46.

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

47.

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.

48.

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

Marquis, Don

49.

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

Fadiman, Clifton

50.

When all things are equal, translucence in writing is more effective than transparency, just as glow is more revealing than glare.

Thurber, James