English Writers Quotes

#1. I alone of English writers have consciously set myself to make music out of what I may call the sound of sense.

Robert Frost

#2. The English Writers of Tragedy are possessed with a Notion, that when they represent a virtuous or innocent Person in Distress, they ought not to leave him till they have delivered him out of his Troubles, or made him triumph over his Enemies.

Joseph Addison

#3. Don't get me wrong. I have nothing against this as a method, but it is not what English writers do.

William Golding

#4. Most English writers are not interested in change but in the social novel. That demands a static backdrop. I'm intensely interested in change - probably as a matter of self-preservation. What the hell is going to happen next?

J.G. Ballard

#5. Maybe half a dozen think they are a community, but, in general terms, I think English writers tend to face outwards, away from each other, and write in their own patch, as it were.

William Golding

#6. What is important for my purpose is that it was during the "anti-Fascist" phase that the younger English writers gravitated towards Communism. The

George Orwell

#7. One of the less vaunted joys of Austen is that she is one of the greatest writers in the English language who also happened to write witty romance novels. Women enjoy the love stories in Austen the same way men read Hemingway for the hunting and fishing: it provides guiltless pleasure.

Alessandra Stanley

#8. To translate a poem from thinking into English takes all night.

Grace Paley

#9. 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

#10. I would say that the writers I like and trust have at the base of their prose something called the English sentence. An awful lot of modern writing seems to me to be a depressed use of language. Once, I called it "vow-of-poverty prose." No, give me the king in his countinghouse. Give me Updike.

Martin Amis

#11. If you think of India in the 1980s, there weren't many writers in English around. The ones that were there, Amitav Ghosh or Vikram Seth, were living abroad or publishing from abroad.

Pankaj Mishra

#12. Isherwood received bags of fan mail, far more than Tennessee Williams had for Memoirs. There was the sexual and jokey (a fifteen-year-old English schoolboy sent his photo and wrote on the back, "My tits are on fire").

Christopher Bram

#13. Indian writers have appropriated English as an Indian language, and that gives a certain freshness to the way we write.

Vikas Swarup

#14. If I have learned how to write fiction it's by working with great writers and getting them to explain their craft to me so that I can do it in English.

Elliott Colla

#15. Over the years, I developed a theory about why writers are such procrastinators: We were too good in English class. This sounds crazy, but hear me out.

Megan McArdle

#16. English teachers, workshops, and myths try to make writers slow down. We are the ONLY ART on the planet that tells young artists to not practice and do less to get better. Head-shaking in its stupidity. And new writers buy into that.

Dean Wesley Smith

#17. The English and Americans dislike only some Irish
the same Irish that the Irish themselves detest, Irish writers
the ones that think.

Brendan Behan

#18. What the semicolon's anxious supporters fret about is the tendency of contemporary writers to use a dash instead of a semicolon and thus precipitate the end of the world. Are they being alarmist?

Lynne Truss

#19. 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

#20. I learned English by watching soaps as a kid, and since I don't have any formal education and can't teach at the universities like other literary writers do.

Kola Boof

#21. 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

#22. During the 20th century, Chechnya was written about by local poets and novelists, as well as writers from Russia and Central Asia, but very little is available in English translation.

Anthony Marra

#23. English literature is a glorious inheritance which is open to all - there are no barriers, no coupons, and no restrictions. In the English language and in its great writers there are great riches and treasures, of which, of course, the Bible and Shakespeare stand along on the highest platform.

Winston Churchill

#24. The closest to my heart is not just one book - it's the whole series of novels, Indigo Diaries. The first volume, "Gods' Food," is already available in English.

Sahara Sanders

#25. Our everyday language has become encumbered, Germanic, artificial, bureaucratic, inorganic. It may not be exaggerated to say that by now American writers face but two alternatives: write English, or write gobbledygook.

John Lukacs

#26. I do feel fortunate to have some knowledge of the great Latin American writers, including some that are probably not that well known in English. I'm thinking of Jose Maria Arguedas, whom I read when I was living in Lima, and who really impacted the way I viewed my country.

Daniel Alarcon

#27. There are plenty of good Indian writers in English, and none of us feel we are carrying the burden of being a poster boy.

Vikram Seth

#28. Yeah, I know what your English Professor tried to tell you. But if your English Professor could make a living writing fiction, they would have been doing it.

Dean Wesley Smith

#29. It has always been very difficult for writers to survive commercially in India because the market was so small. But that's not true at all any more. It's one of the world's fastest growing and most vibrant markets for books, especially in English.

Aravind Adiga

#30. David Foster Wallace, in my opinion, is one of the greatest writers we've ever had, certainly in the last twenty years. His obvious dominance of the English language is partnered with honest moments and the most beautifully dark sensibility.

John Krasinski

#31. In one particular chapter in Ulysses, James Joyce imitates every major writing style that's been used by English and American writers over the last 700 years - starting with Beowulf and Chaucer and working his way up through the Renaissance, the Victorian era and on into the 20th century.

Frederick Lenz

#32. Class is the most difficult subject for American writers to deal with as it is the most difficult for the English to avoid.

Gore Vidal

#33. Certainly, historically, there has been more attention given in the international media to Indian English-language writers than to Pakistani English-language writers. But that, in my opinion, was justified by the sheer number of excellent writers coming from India and the Indian diaspora.

Mohsin Hamid

#34. I am one of the best five writers to come out of English music since the war.

Roger Waters

#35. Librarians and romance writers accomplish one mission better than anyone, including English teachers: we create readers for life - and what could be more fulfilling than that?

Susan Elizabeth Phillips

#36. Listen, here's the thing about an English degree - if you sat somebody down and asked them to make a list of the writers they admire over the last hundred years, see how many of them got a degree in English.

David Mamet

#37. Careful writers and discerning readers delight in the profusion of words in the English lexicon, no two of which are exact synonyms. Many words convey subtle shades of meaning,

Steven Pinker

#38. Women writers should write a lot if they want to write. Take the English women, for example. What amazing workers.

Anton Chekhov

#39. I wish more Italian literature were translated and read in English. I've discovered so many extraordinary and diverse writers: Lalla Romano, Carlo Cassola. Beppe Fenoglio, Giorgio Manganelli, just to name a few.

Jhumpa Lahiri

#40. I went to the Alabama public schools at a time when my English teachers, all but one of whom was a woman, taught nothing but the classics. They revered the great British and American writers.

Thomas H. Cook

#41. Apart from a few simple principles, the sound and rhythm of English prose seem to me matters where both writers and readers should trust not so much to rules as to their ears.

F.L. Lucas

#42. Writing became an obsessive compulsive habit but I had almost no money so I thought about being an urban firefighter and having lots of free time in which to write or becoming an English teacher and thinking about books and writers on a daily basis. That swayed me.

David Guterson

#43. The English may not always be the best writers in the world, but they are incomparably the best dull writers.

Raymond Chandler

#44. At the height of the British Empire very few English novels were written that dealt with British power. It's extraordinary that at the moment in which England was the global superpower the subject of British power appeared not to interest most writers.

Salman Rushdie

#45. Scandinavian crime fiction has become a great success all across the world and rightfully so. Sjowall and Wahloo ushered in a whole generation of Swedish crime writers, many of whom are now available in English.

Camilla Lackberg

#46. She saw poetry where other writers merely saw failure to cope with English.

Alice Walker