Top 100 I Am Not 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. I am not a writer, but I have been told I write good emails.
Isabel Gillies
#3. 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
#4. 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
#5. 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
#6. 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
#8. 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
#9. I am a writer, not a transcriber.
Ivan Doig
#10. 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
#11. 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
#12. I believe in the verb, not the noun - I am not a writer, but someone compelled to write.
Richard Flanagan
#13. I am not a slow writer, I am not a fast writer ... I am a half-fast writer.
Robert Asprin
#14. 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
#15. 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
#16. 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
#18. 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
#19. 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
#20. 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
#21. 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
#23. Bizarrely, I am convinced that a writer incapable of talking about himself is not a complete writer. - WITOLD GOMBROWICZ,
Clive James
#24. 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
#25. 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
#26. 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
#27. 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
#28. 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
#29. I am not a consecutive writer.
Dr. Seuss
#30. 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
#31. I spend more time being what I am: a writer, not the visiting celebrity.
Jerry Spinelli
#32. 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
#33. 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
#34. 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
#35. 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
#36. Of course, if I write a first-person novel about a woman writer, I am inviting every book reviewer to apply the autobiographical label
to conclude that I am writing about myself. But one must never not write a certain kind of novel out of fear of what the reaction to it will be.
John Irving
#37. Personally, I am always more impressed by simplicity, clarity; it is the mark of a writer who knows his subject well and is secure enough not to 'lay it on' in the telling. Aim for complexity of thought, not expression.
Noah Lukeman
#38. As writer Elisabeth Elliot phrased it, The fact that I am a woman does not make me a different kind of Christian, but the fact that I am a Christian does make me a different kind of woman.
Liz Curtis Higgs
#39. It's not about fancy literary prizes. It's not about seeming impenetrable or smart or high fallutin. I'm not trying to impress anyone. I am trying to make you feel a story, that's all.
Maggie Stiefvater
#40. I have explained many times that I am, by Profession, a Gambler
not some jock-sniffing nerd or a hired human squawk-box with the brain of a one-cell animal. No. That would be your average career sportswriter
and, more specifically, a full-time Baseball writer.
Hunter S. Thompson
#41. I am a writer. I could not afford to take 15 months off from my writing career to play detective.
James Ellroy
#42. I do not understand why any poet or writer would run for office; that's a different sense of who you are. I'm just a poet. I am as truthful as I can be. That makes me an artist. I heed the people; I do not lead the people.
Nikki Giovanni
#43. As a writer, I am not opposed to killing off villains. That's not the kind of later biting in the ass I prefer for my protagonist.
Gabbo De La Parra
#44. I am so happy that I married a comedy writer. He's never not without a joke. No matter where we are.
Christa Miller
#45. I am an expressionist and by that I mean that I'm not a photographer or a writer or a painter or a tap dancer, but rather someone who expresses himself according to his needs.
Duane Michals
#46. I am not a historian. I am a writer obsessed with remembering, with remembering the past
Eduardo Galeano
#47. I'm not an autobiographical writer, but I am a writer who deals with human emotion on all levels.
P.J. Harvey
#48. Why do I write? It's not that I want people to think I am smart, or even that I am a good writer. I write because I want to end my loneliness.
Jonathan Safran Foer
#49. I am also a writer. That is a fact not known by the public in general.
Bob Kane
#50. As a writer, I am not goddess of the universes I create. I am at most a stage manager of the plentiful gifts which tumble out of the horn of plenty, which is to say there is a source so sweet and forgiving and generous that I pray every day to let that source be my guide.
Rebecca Wells
#51. I'm not Shakespeare. I have no delusions of who I am, as a writer. I wrote a simply beautiful script that's a fun-filled, joyous fantasy, and I was fine with making changes for the actors that made them comfortable.
Steve Antin
#52. As things stand now, I am going to be a writer. I'm not sure that I'm going to be a good one or even a self-supporting one, but until the dark thumb of fate presses me to the dust and says 'you are nothing', I will be a writer.
Hunter S. Thompson
#53. As a director who does not like to write, I am always looking for scripts that I can contribute to through directing. I don't want to do the same thing that the writer is doing; I want to add an angle or highlight a theme.
Jen McGowan
#54. truths. History is concerned solely with the facts; emotions are outside of its realm of interest. In fact, it's considered improper to admit feelings into history. But I look at the world as a writer and not a historian. I am fascinated by people.
Svetlana Alexievich
#55. I definitely could not write a character that was cruel or unconcerned with animal welfare. For me, not just as a writer but for the person I am, I love animals.
Lori Foster
#56. I make no complaint. I am a writer. I do not accept my condition; I will strive to change it; but I inhabit it, I am trying to learn from it.
Salman Rushdie
#57. I don't carry notebooks and I don't consciously store ideas. I try not to think that I am a writer and I am pretty good at doing that. I don't like writers, but then I don't like insurance salesmen either.
Charles Bukowski
#59. I am, of course, a frustrated rock star - I'd much rather be a rock star than a writer. Or own a record shop. Still, it's not a bad life, is it? You just sit at a computer and make stuff up.
Ian Rankin
#60. We are not nouns, we are verbs. I am not a thing - an actor, a writer - I am a person who does things - I write, I act - and I never know what I'm going to do next. I think you can be imprisoned if you think of yourself as a noun.
Stephen Fry
#62. In the end, I am quite normal. I don't have odd habits. I don't dramatize. Above all, I do not romanticize the act of writing. I don't talk about the anguish I suffer in creating. I do not have a fear of the blank page, writer's block, all those things that we hear about writers.
Jose Saramago
#63. I can still remember the miraculous feeling of writing a sentence, then more sentences, telling a story. The first thing I wrote was a one-page summary of Robinson Crusoe and I am so sorry I do not have it any more; it was at that moment I became an author.
Henning Mankell
#65. I guess a witness is all I am. I think as a writer, you're pretty removed. Writing is a very selfish, individualistic pursuit. So in that sense I'm a witness because I'm not participating.
Sherman Alexie
#66. For the collection, I am like a painter or a writer. I may or may not be a character in my own story.
Sonia Rykiel
#67. I am a driven writer. I feel guilty if I don't write, not self-indulgent if I do.
Marge Piercy
#68. I can't write, I am not a writer, you say. Remember no one has ever become a writer without actually writing
Bangambiki Habyarimana
#69. I am a writer - that is what I am before being a performer or musician. I love waking up in the morning and then going to sleep that night with something that did not exist.
Brian McKnight
#70. From my earliest years I had always wanted to be a writer. It was not that I had any particular message for humanity. I am still plugging away and not the ghost of one so far, so it begins to look as though, unless I suddenly hit mid-season form in my eighties, humanity will remain a message short.
P.G. Wodehouse
#71. I retained no records and I am not a good writer anyhow. So the best approach is for historians like you to extract the facts directly from people like me.
Shunroku Hata
#72. 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
#73. I'm not a perfect song writer, but I am song writing problems with dynamics, instrument change and arrangements.
Richard Patrick
#74. As a character I am dead, as a writer I am not.
Deyth Banger
#75. And if I am asked today to advise a young writer who has not yet made up his mind what way to go, I would try to persuade him to devote himself first to the work of someone greater, interpreting or translating him.
Stefan Zweig
#76. The sentences I write have their roots in song and poetry, and take their bearings from music and painting, as much as from the need to impart mere information, or mirror anything. I am not a realist writer, even if I seem like one.
Colm Toibin
#77. I came to the conclusion that I am not a fiction writer.
Tim LaHaye
#78. I feel, am mad as any writer must in one way be; why not make it real? I am too close to the bourgeois society of suburbia: too close to people I know I must sever my self from them, or be a part of their world: this half and half compromise is intolerable.
Sylvia Plath
#80. I was very pleased, obviously, to have outsold great writers. But I'm not insane - I do realise that I am a popular writer who people buy to take on vacation.
Maeve Binchy
#81. When I was first offered the book deal, I was like, 'I am not a writer. I haven't practiced this.' My approach has been completely stream-of-consciousness, and then edit down, because that's been YouTube for me forever.
Tyler Oakley
#82. If you grow up in Ireland and read books then you really are obliged to attempt your own some time. It is not exactly a choice. I still don't know if I am a writer. Believe me, there are days when I have my doubts.
Anne Enright
#83. I am not a self-help writer. I am a self-problem writer. When people read my books, I provoke some things. I cannot justify my work. I do my work; it is up to them to classify it, to judge.
Paulo Coelho
#84. I am not and autobiographical writer--one can't be without a solid and explicable self--and read all autobiographical writers with the same curiosity. What kind of life permits a person the right to become his own subject?
Yiyun Li
#85. I am glad to have found a readership, but one can't write only what is likely to sell. A writer is not a shopkeeper. A writer creates an imaginary world that he transmits to others.
Tahar Ben Jelloun
#86. I'm a writer. I could not or would not ever run a business. I don't even have a secretary. And contrary to some of the stereotypes, entrepreneurs are not loners. I am.
Peter Drucker
#87. Well, I'm a slow writer. For me, a good day is a page, maybe a page and a half. I'd love to be more efficient, but I am not.
Charles Frazier
#88. I am not really a writer. I am just someone who is haunted, and I will write the hauntings down.
Janet Frame
#89. I am not a born writer, but I was born a writer.
Enid Bagnold
#90. I am not a good enough writer to have an agenda or come up with a message and try to put it into a song. It's more like you write what comes to you ... You try to reflect the mood of the songs.
Eddie Vedder
#91. There is nothing wrong with a writer who has a distinct style in book after book, but I am not interested in repeating myself.
Jay Neugeboren
#92. I am a writer who happens to love women. I am not a lesbian who happens to write.
Jeanette Winterson
#93. If I were not a writer, I would spend more time doing the things that I am already doing, which include doing research in physics, teaching, and running a nonprofit organization with a mission to empower women in Cambodia.
Alan Lightman
#94. One thing I can tell you is this, that I am not a methodical writer.
Wole Soyinka
#95. Naturally, since I myself am a writer, I do not wish the ordinary reader to read no modern books. But if he must read only the new or only the old, I would advise him to read the old.
C.S. Lewis
#96. I'm pleased to have outsold great writers. But I'm not insane - I realize I am a writer people buy to take on vacation.
Maeve Binchy
#97. I am truly obsessed with Lena Dunham. I find everything about her unique and refreshing. She is a brilliant, hilarious and honest writer who is not afraid to make her audience uncomfortable.
Spencer Kayden
#98. There are actors who can pull of a writer's lines; I am not competent enough to do that.
Salman Khan
#99. Really, I am entirely material driven. If a project appeals to me, I will try to find the right writer and director. And that may be someone I've worked with before, or it may not. It may be a woman, or it may not.
Alison Owen
#100. My youthful dream of becoming a writer has been realized. I am so pleased I did not let my young self down.
Jack Gantos
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