Top 100 I Am A Writer Quotes
#1. I am not and will never again be a young writer, a young homeowner, a young teacher. I was never a young wife. The only thing I could do now for which my youth would be a truly notable feature would be to die. If I died now, I'd die young. Everything else, I'm doing middle-aged.
Meghan Daum
#2. When I set out to write crime fiction, I didn't think to myself, 'I'm going to model myself on Agatha Christie' or 'I am going to be a crime writer in the Christie tradition'.
Sophie Hannah
#3. I am not a writer, but I have been told I write good emails.
Isabel Gillies
#4. I've always wondered, am I a writer who preaches or a preacher who writes? I don't know. I love them both.
John Piper
#5. I never want kids to walk away after a school presentation and say, 'I met a writer today.' I want them to say, 'I am a writer.'
Doreen Cronin
#6. I find it very disturbing to be advertised, as I have noticed that it is the advertised authors that stink. I am pretty sure I am going to stink from now on, and it might just as well be in Harpers as anywhere else, I suppose. A writer is like a beanplant-he has his day and then he gets stringy.
E.B. White
#7. Even when I cannot write, I know I am still a writer, just the way I know I am still sexual even if I have not had a lover for many months.
Olga Broumas
#8. The American writer is a very pampered figure - by foundations, by fellowships, by publishing advances. Even though I am not American, I have been pampered enough myself to know how it can make your life too frictionless.
Pankaj Mishra
#10. When I think about myself as a writer, for sure I am a science fiction writer. The tools of extrapolation, the tools of anticipating the future - those are science fictional questions.
Paolo Bacigalupi
#11. I'm not a writer. I marvel at writing. I am sometimes absolutely astounded when I read something and I think how in the world did that man or that woman sit down at a typewriter, a computer or a pen and an ink well, and seemingly have nothing come between their heart and that pen.
Kevin Spacey
#12. I am a writer because I write, an author because I create, a poet because the words are in my soul.
Wesley D. Gray
#13. I am a writer: to the core of my being, the marrow of my bones ... to the depth of my very soul. I am a writer.
Valjeanne Jeffers
#14. How do I tell people who I am? Not being a writer, the only way is to sing songs that reflect my opinions.
Cass Elliot
#15. Grub Street turns out good things almost as often as Parnassus. For if a writer is hard up enough, if he's far down enough (down where I have been and am rising from, I am really saying), he can't afford self-doubt and he can't let other people's opinions, even a father's, keep him from writing.
Wallace Stegner
#17. 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
#18. The moment when I am no longer more than a writer, I will cease to write.
Albert Camus
#19. I am very present in my work and my work is somehow an expression of my soul, but at the same time I think that a writer cannot write out of nothing.
Paulo Coelho
#20. As you know, Joyce was a writer who asked his reader to give him a lifetime," he said. "I am that reader, and I can tell you it was a wasted life.
Philip Levine
#21. I am very much afraid that to the fiction writer the fact that we shall always have the poor with us is a source of satisfaction,for it means, essentially, that he will always be able to find someone like himself.
Flannery O'Connor
#22. I am almost six-novels-old. It took me until the third novel to call myself a writer.
Manju Kapur
#23. A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul, and that, I am sure, is why he does it
Roald Dahl
#24. Primarily, I am a prose writer with axes to grind, and the theatre is a good place to do the grinding in. I prefer comedy to 'serious' drama because I believe one can get the ax sharper on the comedic stone.
Gore Vidal
#25. I am a writer, not a transcriber.
Ivan Doig
#26. But I am a writer, and I deal in words, and I need to have them spelled out for me
precisely.
Sydney Jane Baily
#27. A writer's first duty is to be clear. Clarity is an excellent virtue. Like all virtues it can be pursued at ruinous cost. Paid, so far as I am concerned, joyfully.
Storm Jameson
#28. I am a better writer for having fewer demons, and I am more curious about the world and the people in it. So those of you thinking you might need your demons in order to be creative: I beg to differ.
Rick Moody
#29. When the whole world reads your books, is there any other happiness for a writer? I am happy that my books are read in 57 languages. But I am focused on Istanbul not because of Istanbul but because of humanity. Everyone is the same in the end.
Orhan Pamuk
#30. There is Harlan Ellison the human being, who takes a crap a couple of times a day, and who farts, and who eats chicken croquettes, if I can find them. And then there is the writer, this writer-person, who is a much finer person than I. Much more orderly, much more meaningful. Worthier, than I [am].
Harlan Ellison
#31. I am not a writer, but I feel that when our production company is successful, we'll be able to give some young writers with fresh voices an opportunity to put their work out there.
Viola Davis
#32. I've wanted to be a writer since I was a boy, though it seemed an unlikely outcome since I showed no real talent. But I persevered and eventually found my own row to hoe. Ignorance of other writers' work keeps me from discouragement and I am less well-read than the average bus driver.
Garrison Keillor
#33. I believe in the verb, not the noun - I am not a writer, but someone compelled to write.
Richard Flanagan
#34. I know who I am and what I'm doing in my life and what I've accomplished and continue to accomplish as a performer, as a writer, as an artist, as a person, as a human being.
Justin Bieber
#35. I am not a slow writer, I am not a fast writer ... I am a half-fast writer.
Robert Asprin
#36. My father, a Russian translator, wanted to distinguish me by calling me Misha, the Russian diminutive of his name, Michael. My name and work as a writer specialising in the Balkans has created a myth that I have Slavic connections, but actually I am British.
Misha Glenny
#37. It's wonderful to know that the power to define who I am rests solely with me. If I decide I am an artist, or a poet, a teacher or a writer then I AM.
Renae A. Sauter
#38. I am often asked what I would be doing if I hadn't become a writer. I have long said I would probably be a chef or a garden designer or a decorator, but since recording my own books, there is no doubt in my mind that if the writing doesn't work out, voice work is what I would choose.
Jane Green
#39. I am very fortunate in that I have spent pretty much my whole life being a writer, and before I was a writer, I was a storyteller.
Isobelle Carmody
#40. I have never pretended to be a great writer. I am totally immodest about being a great reporter and a good news writer. I write fast and I write accurately, nearly as accurately as anybody can be, and that's my skill.
Walter Cronkite
#41. Certainly, I read a lot and follow the news. But as a writer, I am not interested in a political story. I am searching for the humanity of the characters. I never set out to write a book about an 'issue.'
Cristina Henriquez
#42. I am a failure as a writer. The publishers won't publish me, the bookshops won't carry my books, the critics won't write about me. I am excluded from all anthologies, and completely ignored.
Anais Nin
#43. I suffer depression only in the sense that I am a writer. We don't have proper jobs to go to. We are on our own all day. Show me a writer who doesn't get depressed: who has a completely stable mood. They'd be a garage mechanic or something.
Mark Haddon
#44. I am happiest sitting against a tree, with my notebook or sketchpad on my knee, capturing the moment.
Fennel Hudson
#45. I am very active on Twitter and one thing that keeps popping up is "How do I balance having a kid and writing?" And I know it should not be as aggravating, but I know no one ever asks a male writer that. Or, any male that.
Celeste Ng
#46. I am happy to be a regional writer. My region is the American West, old Mexico, West Virginia, New York, Europe, Australia, the human heart, and the male groin.
Edward Abbey
#47. I am not a trained writer and I don't think anyone would accuse me of being a funny person. But I feel God has truly blessed me.
Vantile Whitfield
#49. Well, I outline fanatically. I am a long thinker and a slow writer, though I am trying to get faster.
William Landay
#50. Since I am first of all a character writer, that character's emotions are as vivid to me as my own. I always begin with an emotion after I have established a character in my mind. I feel what they feel. I guess that is why it comes across so strongly.
S.E. Hinton
#51. I am of course confident that I will fulfill my tasks as a writer in all circumstances
from my grave even more successfully and more irrefutably than in my lifetime.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
#52. Two years ago, I was a twenty-nine year old secretary. Now I am a thirty-one year old writer. I get paid very well to sit around in my pajamas and type on my ridiculously fancy iMac, unless I'd rather take a nap. Feel free to hate me
I certainly would.
Julie Powell
#53. I am a writer. Imagining what someone would say or do comes to me as naturally as breathing.
Joan Didion
#54. I am not an analytical writer. Once I flesh out my characters and decide on the elements of my plot, the story unfolds in my head almost as though it was a movie reel.
Susan Carroll
#55. Like a father with his daughter, the writist plays peek-a-boo with the world. His aim is to evoke that sweet smile, the one that says "i remember you. I am glad you are here again".
D.A. Botta
#56. I am interested in the confines of the page and busting through/off the page as well. A writer must let go of the line when writing prose poems, which brings its own pleasures.
Denise Duhamel
#57. I am married to a writer, and this - writing - is an odd enterprise. It's something we both support very strongly.
Siri Hustvedt
#58. Music is just a really fun hobby that I do, because I'm actually really good about writing songs and producing. People don't realize this, but I am an excellent writer for artists.
Tila Tequila
#59. Any writer who gives a reader a pleasurable experience is doing every other writer a favor because it will make the reader want to read other books. I am all for it.
S.E. Hinton
#60. For me, while writing I am an engineer, so if I decide to change the format, I want to add a section, to move a section, reorganize the section, anything I want to do, I just boot words, and I do what I want to do. So, I feel completely empowered when I'm a writer.
Guy Kawasaki
#61. I'm a fiction writer, and I do write essays, but I am not a poet. And I absolutely reject the phrase 'woman writer' as anti-feminist. I wrote an essay about this as far back as 1977, at the height of the neo-feminist movement.
Cynthia Ozick
#62. I was at a time of my life of making choices, I suppose: am I a writer, am I a visual artist? And when I was a teenager. I thought I would be a film-maker. Am I a musician? If so, what kind of musician am I?
David Toop
#63. I am home because I am a writer, but sometimes, when I'm not productive (productivity: the expectations of capitalism), I feel like a terrible housewife, or a sick person.
Kate Zambreno
#64. My first three books, the collections, were fun to write and a great start but I have matured so much as a writer since then and am extremely proud of the Detective Byone novels- they will be my legacy!
Ricardo M. Fleshman
#65. I used to think that once a writer became a man of letters, if only for a half hour, he was done for. And here I am now, at the very moment of such an odious, though respectable, danger.
Dylan Thomas
#66. I'm better at being a lawyer than I am at being a writer.
David Shapiro
#67. As you know, I am not a writer but a Party functionary. But like every Communist I consider myself to have been mobilized by Party propaganda and deem it my duty to participate actively in the work of our press.
Leonid Brezhnev
#69. Running taught me to have faith in my skills as a writer. I learned how much I can demand of myself, when I need a break, and when the break starts to get too long. I known how hard I am allowed to push myself.
Haruki Murakami
#70. Bizarrely, I am convinced that a writer incapable of talking about himself is not a complete writer. - WITOLD GOMBROWICZ,
Clive James
#71. I got my Bachelor's degree in nursing and worked nine years - even taught nursing in a college - before I stopped and said to myself, 'This is not who I am. I am not really a nurse inside. I'm a writer.'
Sue Monk Kidd
#72. I've been known to write 10 pages a day for 10 days running before I take a breath. I am not a disciplined writer. I'm one of those people who laughingly call themselves inspirational writers, which basically means someone who has no control over their own creative process.
Catherine Ryan Hyde
#73. I'm a novelist, I'm not an activist. I'm not a non-fiction writer, I'm not a journalist. I'm not a foodie, I'm not even really an animal person, or an environmentalist. I did the best I could with this, but it's not who I am.
Jonathan Safran Foer
#75. I am a writer and always was; being a writer is an integral part of my identity. Being published, being well regarded, is a component of that identity.
Brian Aldiss
#76. All that I am is me. So I'm not really a poet or a writer or an actor or an activist; I'm me, and these are things that I do.
John Trudell
#78. I am a writer who has a policy to allocate 90 percent of my time for research and the remaining 10 percent to write.
Andrea Hirata
#79. I am a lover of love and I am a lover of words, and the two together spin visions of airy castles, but also may pierce the heart of hope. And so I remind you that I am a fool, a poet, and what matters is reality, not lovely words. Words are full of promise, yet empty of matter.
Waylon H. Lewis
#80. I am not a consecutive writer.
Dr. Seuss
#81. As a fiction writer I am not always sure where reality ends and non reality begins, when sane thoughts become less than sane, or what is imagination versus undiscovered truth, but ultimately, it is my job to make you as unsure as I am.
Kathryn Mattingly
#82. It's hard to read good fiction when I am writing, because if it is really good I catch myself sort of inadvertently imitating a great writer.
John Grisham
#83. I am a worried person with a stressed out soul, living a simple life with no capital.
Charlotte Eriksson
#84. I always begin with a source of inspiration that comes from nature. The story comes from my research, volunteering, and meeting the people involved in that story world. I am an intuitive writer and an image, sound, experience can all inspire a scene or a plot twist!
Mary Alice Monroe
#85. I feel acutely aware of how young I am. In a way that is good. It's productive. It makes me realise that I should be growing as a writer and a person.
Veronica Roth
#86. My fear, as a writer, is that I am a curiosity. That I can only bring you this peculiar condition from far away, from outside, and if you look at it then it will mean nothing. So, I have to pretend it's more than that. Horror writing lets me do that.
Tony Burgess
#87. I spend more time being what I am: a writer, not the visiting celebrity.
Jerry Spinelli
#88. I am a meat-loving Southern girl. Add in being a writer, and that means I drink more than I should, too.
Sarah Lacy
#89. I am quite a slow writer. I can only work under pressure; I wait until the last minute.
James Hunter
#90. Being a Negro writer these days is a racket and I'm going to make the most of it while it lasts. About twice a year I sell a story. It is acclaimed. I am a genius in the making. Thank God for this Negro literary renaissance. Long may it flourish
Wallace Thurman
#91. I am so sick of being exhorted, as a writer, to improve the world by representing it in a more hopeful way.
Russell Smith
#92. I'm not the type of woman who shows off my body; I'm a vocalist and I'm a writer and I think people see that more so than they see anything else. That's just who I am.
Jazmine Sullivan
#93. I am a writer (and one day I'll be an author). For a long time I was a bookseller (who wrote) or a TV producer (who wrote), but for the last decade or so, its been "writer."
Michael Scott
#95. If success in selling is my primary interest, I am not primarily a writer, but a salesperson. If I teach success in selling as the writer's primary objective, I am not teaching writing; I'm teaching, or pretending to teach, the production and marketing of a commodity.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#96. One of the best descriptions of the type of writer I am was given by Tom Paulin, who described himself as a 'binge' writer - like a binge drinker. I go on binges.
Seamus Heaney
#97. I had never thought of myself as a director and found out that I was not. I am a writer who was able to direct the films that I write.
Anthony Minghella
#98. I'm a better writer than I am a singer, and I express myself easily through writing.
Rebecca Ferguson
#99. I am glad I have found a readership, but one can't write only what is likely to sell. A writer is not a shopkeeper.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
#100. It is scary to write - period - for me, but once you get past the idea that it's scary to write, I still can only be who I am. As a writer, my job, to me, is to expose myself - to really sort of dig in and find out who I am and then put it on the page.
Jason Robert Brown
