English Writer Sayings

#1. No one, at any rate no English writer, has written better about childhood than Dickens. In spite of all the knowledge that has accumulated since, in spite of the fact that children are now comparatively sanely treated, no novelist has shown the same power of entering into the child's point of view.

George Orwell

#2. Not long ago, an English writer telephoned me from London, asking questions. One was "What's your alma mater?" I told him, "Books." You will never catch me with a free fifteen minutes in which I'm not studying something I feel might be able to help the black man.

Malcolm X

#3. When success happens to an English writer, he acquires a new typewriter. When success happens to an American writer, he acquires a new life.

Martin Amis

#4. The English writer, Charles Lamb, said one day: "I hate that man." "But you don't know him." "Of course, I don't," said Lamb. "Do you think I could possibly hate a man I know?"

Charles Lamb

#5. The really heroic thing about Nick Hornby is that he lives in north London and rarely leaves it ... Every English writer needs their corner that is forever England - but only a few brave men choose to make that corner Highbury.

Zadie Smith

#6. If circumstances should make it impossible (temporarily, I hope) for me to be a Russian writer, perhaps I shall be able, like the Pole Joseph Conrad, to become for a time an English writer ... ("Letter To Stalin")

Yevgeny Zamyatin

#7. It was very lucky for me as a writer that I studied the physical sciences rather than English. I wrote for my own amusement. There was no kindly English professor to tell me for my own good how awful my writing really was. And there was no professor with the power to order me what to read, either.

Kurt Vonnegut

#8. Shakespeare shows you what it is possible to do in English as a writer - but also shows you that you might as well give up. As it's all been done before and hundreds of years ago. So I have had that long-standing relationship of oppression and inspiration.

Chris Adrian

#9. I'm basically a writer of ideas, and the English aren't interested in ideas. The English, I'm afraid, are totally brainless.

Colin Wilson

#10. And lucky indeed is the writer who has grown up in Ireland, for the English spoken there is so amusing and musical.
("How to Write with Style". Essay, 1985)

Kurt Vonnegut

#11. I had declared in public my desire to be a writer ... I wanted to develop a curiosity that was oceanic and insatiable as well as a desire to learn and use every word in the English language that didn't sound pretentious or ditzy.

Pat Conroy

#12. A. S. Byatt is a writer in mid-career whose time has certainly come, because 'Possession' is a tour de force that opens every narrative device of English fiction to inspection without, for a moment, ceasing to delight.

Jay Parini

#13. What I really want is to be recognized as a writer; that someday, my poetry - this is an interesting paradox - would be taught in English classes; for my name, along with my poetry, to exist 500 years from now.

Harley King

#14. I do have very deep, fond memories of my family in Mexico City, but I also remember feeling funny for not speaking English - I was basically an immigrant. But I picked up the language fast and soon I knew that I wanted to be a writer.

Louis C.K.

#15. You'll never make your mark as a writer unless you develop a respect for words and a curiosity about their shades of meaning that is almost obsessive. The English language is rich in strong and supple words. Take the time to root around and find the ones you want

William Zinsser

#16. There is simply a better chance of doing well if the writer holds a steady course, enters the stream of English quietly, and does not thrash about.

E.B. White

#17. Every writer dreams of having a backyard cottage, similar to Dahl's 'writing hut.' English cottages and charming huts might seem out of reach, but a good carpenter could build a modest cottage on the cheap.

Kate Klise

#18. My English teacher said that a writer is the worst judge of his own work.

Ilsa J. Bick

#19. A writer who wants to write good stuff needs to read great stuff. If you don't read widely, or read only writers in fashion at the moment, you'll have a limited idea of what can be done with the English language.

Ursula K. Le Guin

#20. I trained as a writer before I became a lawyer. I was headed for a life as an English professor, but that just wasn't me. I'm not a scholar; I didn't have a scholar's attitude toward literature.

Scott Turow

#21. I consider myself a writer who happens to write about history, rather than a historian. I was an English major in college. What I've learned about history is in the field, so to speak. Going into the archives and working with it directly.

Nathaniel Philbrick

#22. What it takes is to actually write: not to think about it, not to imagine it, not to talk about it, but to actually want to sit down and write. I'm lucky I learned that habit a really long time ago. I credit my mother with that. She was an English teacher, but she was a writer.

Luanne Rice

#23. I have no formal training as a writer at all, not even a single English class in college.

Scott Westerfeld

#24. I have a handicap in that English is not my first language. So even though I'm a writer, I don't write anymore because it's just harder in English.

Patricia Riggen

#25. Shakespeare, who is probably the greatest writer and poet of the English language, lived in a time that was politically very conservative and it's reflected in his writings.

Alex Cox

#26. Maybe because I began as a writer, I have a good ear for dialogue, and maybe being an English major - and that I also read a lot as a kid - if I hear somebody say something that I think's funny, or I find a situation or story, I'll try to work that into the movie.

Owen Wilson

#27. If she were a writer she would collect her pencils and notebooks and favourite cat and write in bed. Strangers and lovers would never get past the locked door.

Michael Ondaatje

#28. I have three brothers and one sister, and I'm the third child. Sometimes people say, 'It's only natural you would become a writer - your parents were English professors.' But my four siblings were brought up in the exact same household, and no one else became a writer or an English professor.

Antonya Nelson

#29. Those who prefer their English sloppy have only themselves to thank if the advertisement writer uses his mastery of the vocabulary and syntax to mislead their weak minds.

Dorothy L. Sayers

#30. Of course, English is a very powerful language, a colonizer's language and a gift to a writer. English has destroyed and sucked up the languages of other cultures - its cruelty is its vitality.

Louise Erdrich

#31. I've come across a novel called The Palm-Wine Drinkard, by the Nigerian writer Amos Tutuola, that is really remarkable because it is a kind of fantasy of West African mythology all told in West African English which, of course, is not the same as standard English.

William Golding

#32. Maybe you could be a great writer - maybe even good enough to write a book or articles in a newspaper - but you might not know it until you write that English paper - that English class paper that's assigned to you.

Barack Obama

#33. I think I'm an American writer writing about Latin America, and I'm a Latin American writer who happens to write in English.

Daniel Alarcon

#34. I had three brilliant English teachers at secondary school. They found the writer in me.

Anthony Horowitz

#35. I was a math whiz who stunk at English, so of course I wanted to be a writer more than anything in the world. I performed impromptu plays for my grandmother's sewing circle but forced my little sister to ask for ketchup at McDonald's.

Alethea Kontis

#36. Any opinion writer worth his salt would have rejected the quaint notion that certain eternally aggrieved identity groups have exclusive linguistic rights to words in the English language.

Ilana Mercer

#37. Who'd want to be a modernist writer in the English-speaking world?

Will Self

#38. English food writer Elizabeth David, cook and author Richard Olney and the owner of Domaine Tempier Lulu Peyraud have all really inspired the way I think about food.

Alice Waters

#39. I always serve the writer first because I'm English trained, even though I'm American.

Robert Englund

#40. I spent many years in grad school in English, so I've read a lot in a variety of genres. But adventure fantasy is my bread and butter as a reader, and probably always will be. So it's only natural that I came to that genre as a writer.

Saladin Ahmed

#41. My freshman English professor at Kent State University in 1984 told me I was a good writer, and she loved all the silly pictures I drew in my notebook. She said I should try writing children's books, and so I did.

Dav Pilkey

#42. The only imaginative prose writer of the slightest value who has appeared among the English-speaking races for some years past.

George Orwell

#43. If you're a Norwegian writer, you are not visible in the world. The door of the English language is very hard to open for a Norwegian writer.

Per Petterson

#44. I was also a good writer, by the way. My, you know, my English teacher and writing teacher loved my writing. You know, I wrote short stories and things like that. And they liked them very much.

Robert Barry

#45. It is almost possible to measure a writer's skill by the dexterity with which he repeats, and yet avoids monotony.

George G. Williams

#46. I loved English, and I did very well in it. A lot of teachers encouraged me to write, and because of that, it later made me think it was possible to be a writer.

Sharon Creech

#47. Ian McEwan is a very good writer; the first half of Atonement alone would ensure him a lasting place in English letters.

John Banville

#48. When I started writing comics, 'comics writer' was the most obscure job in the world! If I wanted to be a celebrity, I would have become a moody English screen actor.

Alan Moore

#49. The number one secret of being a successful writer is this: marry an English major.

Stephen Ambrose

#50. I'm a writer to the bone. I love this language you and I read, write and speak. It's called English. And I'm seriously doubting that it's known to some of the unseen people who write the news.

Ann Medlock

#51. As a writer, I like the list of "things to strive for" that Richard Yates kept above his typewriter:
genuine clarity
genuine feeling
the right word
the exact English sentence
the eloquent detail
the rigorous dramatization of story

Richard Yates

#52. I escape disaster by writing a poem with a joke in it:
The past, present, and future walk into a bar - it was tense.

Kelli Russell Agodon

#53. Miss Austen's novels ... seem to me vulgar in tone, sterile in artistic invention, imprisoned in the wretched conventions of English society, without genius, wit, or knowledge of the world. Never was life so pinched and narrow. The one problem in the mind of the writer ... is marriageableness.

Ralph Waldo Emerson