Top 100 A True Writer Quotes
#1. For a true writer, each book should be a new beginning where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment. He should always try for something that has never been done or that others have tried and failed. Then sometimes, with great luck, he will succeed.
Ernest Hemingway,
#2. Everytime I write, it's a catharsis. Even if I never got paid for it, I'd feel compelled to do it. And that's what makes a true writer. It's not how many readers you have or how many publishing contracts. Do you love to write? Then you're an author. No one can take that away from you.
Piper Vaughn
#4. A writer doesn't dream of riches and fame, though those things are nice. A true writer longs to leave behind a piece of themselves, something that withstands the test of time and is passed down for generations.
C.K. Webb
#5. A true writer should be able to write about any color. It's the story they tell that should affect people, not the race.
Dee Dee M. Scott
#7. I couldn't believe a man had written this! Ryker had a way with words and the way with words and the way my emotions got twisted in them was a gift only a true writer possessed.
Sarah Brocious
#8. We never know how much has been missing from our lives until a true writer comes along.
Alfred Kazin
#9. When a person sets out to learn from others and not to teach others he becomes a true writer.
Carla H. Krueger
#10. The road to wisdom is paved with excess.
The mark of a true writer is their ability to mystify the familiar and familiarize the strange.
Walt Whitman
#13. I think a true writer takes whatever time he or she needs to get a poem or story or book right. If you want to be a storyteller, take the time to get it right.
DeWanna Pace
#14. Perhaps he was not a true writer after all. He had read somewhere that, for true writers, nothing was more important than their art, not even love.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
#15. Authority is the unmistakeable tone in the voice of a true writer ...
John Geddes
#16. A true writer cuts their heart open and lets it bleed all over the page...
~Cynthia Batten
Cynthia Batten
#17. Before I'm a writer, I'm definitely a reader and when I read memoir, I really want it to be true.
Augusten Burroughs
#18. Only a person with the true heart of a dictionary-writer would be lying in bed, three days after being stabbed in the gut, worrying about his P's.
Kristin Cashore
#19. Don't lament so much about how your career is going to turn out. You don't have a career. You have a life. Do the work. Keep the faith. Be true blue. You are a writer because you write. Keep writing and quit your bitching. Your book has a birthday. You don't know what it is yet.
Cheryl Strayed
#20. It is true that I am a writer, and I was married to a composer, and I have lived in a small village in New England, but my children are not named Heracles and Persephone, and my daughter doesn't disappear underground every six months and emerge in the spring.
Jamaica Kincaid
#21. Everybody is born with a little bit of writer in them. We all come with the desire to work hard to see our creations come to life on the page. But it is those who choose to do something about this passion that has been ignited inside of them that are true writers.
Brian A. McBride
#22. I lead a very conventional life. I don't lead a writer's life. And I think that can be a source of suspicion and irritation to some people. This was more true when I was living in California, when I didn't lead a writer's life at all.
Joan Didion
#23. A lot of writers ... sit in a log cabin by the lake and put their feet up by the fire in the silence and write. If you can have that that's all very well, but the true writer will learn to write anywhere
even in prison.
Louis Auchincloss
#24. I try to transmit emotion and soul in my voice, but my true passion has always been writing. I feel more like a writer than anything else.
Romeo Santos
#25. True. We both could. One of these days our search history is going to tip off the NSA and then we're going to be in trouble. It was a valid worry for a writer.
Chelsea M. Cameron
#26. The true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece and no other task is of any consequence.
Cyril Connolly
#27. Paul's the writer. Yeah, I wrote a little of that stuff, but that's just technically true. In spirit, and in essence of the truth, it doesn't matter. So I don't know, maybe I'm being foolish for not being technical. Yeah, I wrote a certain portion of the things.
Art Garfunkel
#28. A writer friend who was born in England summed up her feelings for the semicolon in a remark worthy of Henry James: "There is no pleasure so acute as that of a well-placed semicolon." I guess the opposite of that is that there is no displeasure so obtuse as that of an ill-placed semicolon.
Mary Norris
#29. I have never thought that I have sacrificed anything being a writer. That might not be true, maybe I have sacrificed something. Maybe I've given something up, but I can't think of it.
Walter Mosley
#30. What has stayed true in my life as a writer is my dedication to writing - I try to write every day, no matter what - and the joy that writing has given me.
Denise Duhamel
#31. It's true that we, writers, write (create) books, but eventually, a good book gives birth to a good, established writer.
Tarang Sinha
#32. In utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable ... The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true.
John Steinbeck
#33. I know that books seem like the ultimate thing that's made by one person, but that's not true. Every reading of a book is a collaboration between the reader and the writer who are making the story up together.
John Green
#34. The process in which a writer is compelled to counterfeit his true feelings is exactly the opposite of that which the man of society is compelled to counterfeit his. The artist disguises in order to reveal; the man of society disguises in order to conceal
Yukio Mishima
#35. The true writer, the born writer, will scribble words on scraps of litter, the back of a bus tickets, on the wall of a cell.
David Nicholls
#36. It is said that you can't write without a reader. The opposite holds true as well; you can't read without a writer. But if as a single, creative person you are one in the same, then, well ... problem solved! Great writing is born from that which we personally long to read.
Richelle E. Goodrich
#37. he was obliged to confess that the true essence of a writer's work is usually unknown to him. He recalled the case of Swift, who, when he wrote Gulliver's Travels, tried to bring an indictment against all humanity but actually left a book for children.
Anonymous
#38. I have to understand what my strengths and limitations are, and work from a true place. I try to do this as best I can while still protecting my writer self, which more than ever needs privacy.
Sandra Cisneros
#39. Your whole duty as a writer is to please and satisfy yourself, and the true writer always plays to an audience of one.
William Strunk Jr.
#40. I now can be sure that, once I start writing a book, I'll be able to finish it. I've also become more assured about my 'voice' as a writer and being able to keep the characters true to themselves.
J. A. Jance
#41. A writer has the duty to be good, not lousy; true, not false; lively, not dull; accurate, not full of error. He should tend to lift people up, not lower them down. Writers do not merely reflect and interpret life, they inform and shape life.
E.B. White
#42. It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer.
E.B. White
#43. Dreamers become writers, and for me, being a published writer is a dream come true.
David A. Adler
#44. A lot of people ask me, 'Are you born a writer?' And I don't think it's necessarily true. I just think what you either have or you don't is this ability to see something that's complex and worth talking about.
Matt De La Pena
#45. A writer has to true to him or herself. Period. That's it!
Jhumpa Lahiri
#46. As a writer, you have a huge ego. You think that every line means something to everybody the same way it means to you. And that's not true.
Pusha T
#47. Digging deep inside you as a writer will damn near kill you at times. But in the end, your words will be true and undeniable for the reader, and that is all that ever really matters in writing.
Jason E. Hodges
#48. A writer can never know ultimate success, for his true success comes through still being read centuries after his death.
Anthony North
#49. I feel like a very lucky person. From the time I was young, I had a dream of becoming a writer. Now that dream has come true, and I am able to make my living doing something I really love.
Bruce Coville
#50. Admiration from my readers inspire me, and the only 'formula' I believe in towards making a good writer is: 'to thine own self be true!'
Ashwin Sanghi
#51. Any magazine-cover hack can splash paint around wildly and call it a nightmare, or a witches sabbath or a portrait of the devil; but only a great painter can make such a thing really scare or ring true. That's because only a real artist knows the anatomy of the terrible, or the physiology of fear.
H.P. Lovecraft
#52. I once dreamt of being a writer, to have my words known by many from many countries; this dream i dreamt came true ... so why cant your dream come true too? Rayvon L Browne does not believe in the word cant - Rayvon L Browne
Rayvon L. Browne
#53. A true critic ought to dwell upon excellencies rather than imperfections, to discover the concealed beauties of a writer, and communicate to the world such things as are worth their observation.
Joseph Addison
#54. My whole life experience feeds into my writing. I think that must be true for every writer. Clearly the Army and combat were major influences; just the same, you need to understand that many of the writers we have now couldn't load a revolver.
Gene Wolfe
#55. Writing-and this is the big secret-wants to be written. Writing loves a writer the way God loves a true devotee. Writing will fill your heart if you let it. It will fill your pages and help to fill your life.
Julia Cameron
#56. To tell a love story true, a romance writer must bare hearts, souls and bodies.
Chris Lange
#57. My dream was to be known as a writer and to be able to produce at least one book that would be read by people. That dream came true with the publication of my first novel - and all the rest has been a sweet bonus.
Robert Cormier
#58. If a writer is true to his characters they will give him his plot. Observations must play second fiddle to integrity.
Phyllis Bottome
#59. A younger writer, David Leavitt, would later say he envied White for having "such a representative life". And it's true: the zeitgeist blew through White more easily than it did through most people.
Christopher Bram
#60. Every true writer is like a bird; he repeats the same song, the same theme, all his life. For me, this theme as always been revolt.
Alberto Moravia
#61. There is a temptation for the writer or the teacher of church history to want to tell everything, whether it is worthy or faith promoting or not. Some things that are true are not very useful.
Boyd K. Packer
#62. Thomas Ligotti is an absolute master of supernatural horror and weird fiction, and a true original. He pursues his unique vision with admirable honesty and rigorousness and conveys it in prose as powerfully evocative as any writer in the field. I'd say he might just be a genius.
Ramsey Campbell
#63. A writer's problem does not change. He himself changes and the world he lives in changes but his problem remains the same. It is always how to write truly and having found what is true, to project it in such a way that it becomes part of the experience of the person who reads it.
Ernest Hemingway,
#64. I am a writer and editor with a passion for true storytelling. To me, science matters, research matters and knowledge matters, whatever the field.
Lee Gutkind
#65. As an artist, as an actor, as a writer, you have to use what's personal to you. You have to be personal about your work; otherwise, it doesn't ring true.
Alan Alda
#66. From ... the age of five or six, I knew that when I grew up I should be a writer ... I tried to abandon this idea, but I did so with the consciousness that I was outraging my true nature and that sooner or later I should have to settle down and write books.
George Orwell
#67. It's the originality of Pauls Toutonghi's voice and vision that makes this such a remarkable novel. Toutonghi is a true daredevil of a writer, and this fantastically hilarious and affecting book will have you on the edge of your seat.
Skip Horack
#68. Whatever a writer gets paid for his book, it's never enough. I think that's true. It's hard work. But in the end, you wrote a book. It's something real and tangible that sits on a shelf forever.
Jim Gaffigan
#69. Lawyer and technology writer Richard Koman, argued that Google has become a true believer in its own goodness, a belief which justifies its own set of rules regarding corporate ethics, anti-competition, customer service and its place in society.
Nicholas Carr
#70. Speaking as a writer, I'm not interested in trends, I want to write books that are honest, with characters as true to the inner world of the story as I can make them.
Susan Patron
#71. It's always been hard to call myself a writer. I think a part of me still thinks it's too good to be true.
Sarah Dessen
#72. Honorary degrees and lifetime achievement awards are very encouraging. I know that it might sound strange that a writer who has published many books still needs encouragement, but this is true.
Joyce Carol Oates
#73. They say that every writer, they write about himself, and I think that to a certain extent that is true. But also we are creators of fiction.
Jo Nesbo
#74. Incredibly deep research combines with the talents of a fine historian and writer to produce superb narrative history. The true character and relationship of these two iconic westerners emerge to suppress myth and correct more than a century of tomes laden with bad history.
Robert M. Utley
#75. The fluid boundary between individuals and types is a true concern of the real writer.
Elias Canetti
#76. What makes a writer successful is not money or fame (though both are nice) ... it's that in being true to her or himself, the words were able to connect to a reader's heart.
Miyoko Hikiji
#77. I am comfortable calling myself a writer of suspense, or a writer of thrillers; both terms are sort of interchangeable to me. I think that came from a sense of being at conflict with my true nature throughout my youth, and being afraid of discovery, and feeling as if I didn't belong.
Christopher Rice
#78. A thought is truly sought only if it has got, in latent or potent form, the strength of 'WE' which sounds as 'V' that stands for 'VICTORY', and so it reflects the power of a true leader who as writer or speaker involves everyone alike at the same level.
Anuj
#79. I grew up falling in love with kind of story, amazing, wonder tale of the East, which if you're a child growing up in India is all around you.And I think one of the gifts it gave me as a writer was this early knowledge that stories are not true.
Salman Rushdie
#80. I always have strong feelings when I'm writing a book. Sometimes when I'm writing a book, I even cry when I'm writing. Once I read a quotation that I thought was very true for me, which is: "No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader."
Eve Bunting
#81. I am of the opinion that I am not a political writer, and, moreover, that as far as true literature is concerned, there actually are no political writers. I think that my writing is no more political than ancient Greek theatre. I would have become the writer I am in any political regime.
Ismail Kadare
#82. Metaphor reveals a writer's true grasp of life. To the degree that you have no metaphor, you have not yet lived much of a life.
Norman Mailer
#83. The person who judges you without getting to know you has revealed nothing about you but exposes everything about himself to the world. The prudent one knows that true knowledge is not born out of ignorance but a desire to know before casting judgement.
Crystal Evans
#84. A writer judging his own work is like deceived husband - he is frequently the last person to appreciate the true state of affairs.
John D. Voelker
#85. It is true that, with TV, a writer gets a great deal more respect.
Jon Spaihts
#86. A book, a true book, is the writer's confessional. For, whether he would have it so or not, he is betrayed, directly or indirectly, by his characters, into presenting publicly his innermost feelings.
Nelson Algren
#87. Wilbur never forgot Charlotte. Although he loved her children and grandchildren dearly, none of the new spiders ever quite took her place in his heart. She was in a class by herself. It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. Charlotte was both.
E.B. White
#88. It is as true for the writer as for the reader that any novel worth its ink should be an experience first and foremost - not an essay, not a statement, not an orderly rollout of themes and propositions. All of which is to say: stories, too, are wild things.
David Wroblewski
#89. So while it is true that I find really dark stuff funny sometimes, it's also true that as a writer of books I want to have the whole range of human emotions.
Rick Moody
#90. I feel some kind of duty to be really, really honest as a writer. The same is true of my songwriting.
Juliana Hatfield
#91. Every job from the heart is, ultimately, of equal value. The nurse injects the syringe; the writer slides the pen; the farmer plows the dirt; the comedian draws the laughter. Monetary income is the perfect deceiver of a man's true worth.
Criss Jami
#92. I would be lying if I said the journalism doesn't reflect my own choices as a reporter and a writer: what to say, what to emphasize, how to say it, what is true or untrue.
David Simon
#93. Baum (Writer of THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ) was a true educator, and those who read his Oz books are often made what they were not-imaginative , tolerant, alert to wonders, life.
Gore Vidal
#94. Marian Palaia is a writer of startling grace and sensuous lyricism - reading her, you feel as if you've never heard language this beautiful and this true.
Jonis Agee
#95. It is true that a writer writes first to please himself and that his own satisfaction with what he has done is perhaps his greatest satisfaction. But writing is a means of communication. It is not enough to speak; you must also be heard. The message must be received and understood.
Christopher Milne
#96. The writer, like everyone else, is equipped in infancy with a thick padding of things he believes to be true, but which aren't.
Jon Franklin
#97. In my life, I have come to realize that people are afraid of a revolution. A true revolution doesn't have to be fought with an AK47, because our words and practice of non-violent can move mountains.
Henry Johnson Jr
#98. As a writer, it's important to stay true to your story without giving a hoot about publishers, critics and readers. You should do your karma as an author the way you want to, and rest is up to God.
Amish Tripathi
#99. The writer has a feeling and utters it from his true self. The reader reads it and is immediately infected and has exactly the same feeling. This is the whole secret of enchantment and fascination.
Brenda Ueland
#100. I found that the writer who says SUBLATA LUCERNA NULLUM DISCRIMEN INTER MULIERES ('when the lamp is taken away, all women are alike') says true; but without love, this great business is a vile thing.
Giacomo Casanova
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