Top 100 Life Writing Writer Quotes
#1. The writer's life: Hard days, lots of work, no money, too much silence. Nobody's fault. You chose it.
Bill Barich
#2. I'm proud to be a writer. I'm doing the job all my heroes did.
Carla H. Krueger
#3. Today is the day that you create worlds, you change lives, you make a something, a someone, out of nothing.
Today is the day you become a writer.
Alessandra Torre
#4. The purpose of a writer is to show the beauty and tragedy of life in the reader's own mirror.
Debasish Mridha
#5. The more you doubt your talent and strive to improve, the better the writer.
Stephanie Ayers
#6. A butler supplies food to nourish your body, but a writer nourishes your mind through writing.
Debasish Mridha
#7. I write because it's all I know how to do. Writing is my anchor and my purpose. My life is informed by writing, whether the work is going well or I'm stuck in the hell of writer's block, which I'm happy to report only occurs about once a day.
Sue Grafton
#8. Learning to write is not a linear process. There is no logical A-to-B-to-C way to become a good writer. One neat truth about writing cannot answer it all. There are many truths. To do writing practice means to deal ultimately with your whole life.
Natalie Goldberg
#9. Writing is one means to investigate the mystique of life. Each fresh page is an unsullied canvas that an inquisitive writer employs to explore the poetic transience behind their existence.
Kilroy J. Oldster
#10. The writer, his eye on the finish line, never gave enough thought to how to run the race.
William Zinsser
#11. Who thought up the dumb idea to arrange the memoir section in the bookstore by subject?
Slash Coleman
#12. No writer need feel sorry for himself if he writes and enjoys the writing, even if he doesn't get paid for it.
Irwin Shaw
#13. I saw myself as a writer, a novelist, even though I was living the life of a mother and housewife. Writing was - and is - what I do.
Tawni O'Dell
#14. Don't annoy your readers by over-explaining--by telling them something they already know or can figure out. Try not to use words like "surprisingly," "predictably" and "of course," which put a value on a fact before the reader encounters the fact. Trust your material.
William Zinsser
#15. I just write all the time. In my whole life I've never had what I've heard people talk about writer's block. I've never had that. Life is like a song to me. I just hear everything in music, so I have never once thought "Well, I'm never gonna be able to write again." I've got thousands of songs.
Dolly Parton
#16. For the writer, the serial killer is, abstractly, an analogue of the imagination's caprices and amorality; the sense that, no matter the dictates and even the wishes of the conscious social self, the life or will or purpose of the imagination is incomprehensible, unpredictable.
Joyce Carol Oates
#17. 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
#18. My early life had a lot to do with my origins as a writer, but I didn't get into doing any writing at all until I was about 35 years old.
Chris Crutcher
#19. Only after a writer lets literature shape her can she perhaps shape literature. In working-class France, when an apprentice got hurt, or when he got tired, the experienced workers said, "It is the trade entering his body." The art must enter the body, too.
Annie Dillard
#21. A writer needs to ingest love to be passionate. Passion is a metabolite of love, and good writing is an active metabolite of passion.
Roman Payne
#22. Just write. That's my only tip. And read. I guess that's two.
Shannon Celebi
#23. The work of a writer, his continuing work, depends for breath of life on a certain privacy of heart.
Tennessee Williams
#24. You are not the writer. You are the story being told from The Writer.
Richard Wisniewski
#26. Just being a writer allows one the maturity to have random conversations with random strangers!
Avijeet Das
#27. I feel like one can have all of that as a writer; you're writing, you're reading, you're talking to interesting and intelligent people. Your life is structured around whatever book you're writing, and so is your reading and so are many of your conversations.
Sheila Heti
#28. The man who comes to writing late, but is in essence a writer, may sometimes gain as much as he has lost: his experience of life has given him a subject, he is spared the youthful writer's self-torment and soul-searching.
Wright Morris
#29. I think I'm probably going to be one of those unnoticed Authors that get discovered well after I have passed on. I better drill into my daughter now on how I want my books to be abstracted into Television or Film before it's too late lol
Ellie Williams
#30. We can create transcending stories for readers and for us. Creativity is a double edge sword, which can kill the writer.
Rossana Condoleo
#32. In the life of a real writer, nothing is ever lost, no word you write is a waste of your time or energy.
Larry Brooks
#33. Q: Best part about being a musical theatre book writer?
A: Explaining what that is.
Christy Hall
#34. The self-addressed stamped envelope. The representation of everything that was wrong with the old publishing industry.
Alexei Maxim Russell
#35. 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
#36. I think people ease into this careerist professionalism, so if you're a writer it's your job to manufacture books as opposed to writing them and to go to festivals and spend your life emotionally invested in reviews or the awards. You have to shrink your universe in a way. To me, it's the opposite.
Arundhati Roy
#37. ..here's the editor's prescription, writer: 1000 words daily until next checkup.
Rob Bignell, Editor
#38. Returning to writing fiction after years away from it. Returning to the rootstock of my whole life as a writer. It's what I had wanted to be for my entire life, since I can remember, since my particular time immemorial. It's how I got my start as a writer.
Elizabeth Gilbert
#39. Variety is definitely the spice of life but I love writing office romances (I was a secretary before I became a writer), because it's every girl's dream to meet that gorgeous hunky boss who sweeps her off her feet and takes her out of her dull routine.
Helen Brooks
#40. The biggest difference between writing a movie and writing a novel? No one ever tries to sleep with me to get into one of my novels.
Mylo Carbia
#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. A writer never has a vacation. For a writer, life consists of either writing or thinking about writing.
Eugene Ionesco
#43. 'Et Tu, Babe' was born out of my absolute certainty that a writer's life was solitary and insular, and I was happy with that. I love reading and writing; it's my whole life.
Mark Leyner
#44. I have always enjoyed my solitude. It gives me time to think and to write.
Avijeet Das
#46. When people say, 'you're so young to be a writer,' I always reply, 'I started young because I've got a lot to write.
Carla H. Krueger
#48. I think there's a deep impulse in most humans to do creative stuff, whether that's music or art, photography or writing. Most people at some point in their life say they want to do something creative - they want to be an actor, a director, a writer, a poet, a painter or whatever.
Stewart Butterfield
#50. There's a really nice moment in the life of a piece of writing where the writer starts to get a feeling of it outgrowing him - or he starts to see it having a life of its own that doesn't have anything to do with his ego or his desire to 'be a good writer.'
George Saunders
#51. Most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of fifteen.
Willa Cather
#52. As an author I'm in my head all day and I worry that I lose touch with reality. But then my dog pees on my shoe and I know I've found it again.
Michelle M. Pillow
#53. The writer does not dare dream of giving the best of his individuality. No, he must never express his anger. The vacillating demands of mediocrity must be satisfied. Amuse the people, be their clown, give them platitudes about which they can laugh, shadows of truth which they can hold as truths.
Aleksandar Hemon
#54. The Journal is not essentially a confession, a story about oneself. It is a Memorial. What does the writer have to remember? Himself, who he is when he is not writing, when he is living his daily life, when he is alive and real, and not dying and without truth.
Maurice Blanchot
#55. Being passionate about something is the most beautiful characteristic you can develop.
Charlotte Eriksson
#56. I write to create a sky where the moon can touch the sun and not get burned.
Jenim Dibie
#57. It's a memoir of various events in my own life, but it's also a teaching book: along the way I explain the writing decisions I made. They are the same decisions that confront every writer going in search of his or her past: matters of selection, reduction, organization and tone.
William Zinsser
#58. Occupation: Writer
Occupational Hazard: Carpel tunnel
Solution: Wrist guards to bed or my hands do all the sleeping
Perspective: I've decided my wrist guards have turned me into a Ninja Superhero that hides in the shadows
Christy Hall
#59. 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
#60. You hope for that with anything, but with a TV show, the writer and the actor being the right mix are more important than the actual writing of the pilot because you hope it's something that can have a long life.
Jake Kasdan
#61. If you're going to fall in love with anyone, fall in love with a writer. Allow yourself to become immortalised in words.
Jamie L. Harding
#63. I've never been high. Writing is my drug of choice. You don't ever have to come down from that kind of high, I tell ya. And, best part is, it's free.
Christy Hall
#64. Reflective writing produces distinct rewards. A writer does not claim to live exclusively in the moment. A pensive writer retreats into oneself in noble attempt to meld memory, thought, faith, doubt, and other strong emotions into thought capsules while exploring the inscrutable web of creation.
Kilroy J. Oldster
#67. Nothing makes you feel smaller than New York City ...
Christy Hall
#68. 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
#69. I'm simply interested in what is going to happen next. I don't think I can control my life or my writing. Every other writer I know feels he is steering himself, and I don't have that feeling. I don't have that sort of control. I'm simply becoming. I'm startled that I became a writer.
Kurt Vonnegut
#71. In a longish life as a professional writer, I have heard a thousand masterpieces talked out over bars, restaurant tables and love seats. I have never seen one of them in print. Books must be written, not talked.
Morris West
#72. There are times when I can't believe how much ridiculous stuff happens to me and how brilliant it is to be in a position to write about it.
Carla H. Krueger
#73. I have from the first felt sure that the writer, when he sits down to commence his novel, should do so, not because he has to tell a story, but because he has a story to tell. The novelist's first novel will generally have sprung from the right cause.
Anthony Trollope
#74. Don't worry about the consequences, just be a writer!
Samuel Colbran
#75. Confront the page that taunts you with its whiteness. Face your enemy and fill it with words. You are bigger and stronger than a piece of paper.
Fennel Hudson
#76. A writer should feel deeply from his heart of the joys and sorrows of people. And he must write as honestly as possible. Then only can he claim to be a writer.
Avijeet Das
#77. Never be afraid to write what you believe. If the message speaks the truth, others will fear your words for you.
Rob Bignell, Editor
#78. ...you are a writer the moment you start writing, not when you've sold your first book.
Rob Bignell, Editor
#79. I've never yet run out of ideas what to write about ... only out of time to write it in.
Rayne Hall
#80. A writer's knowledge of himself, realistic and unromantic, is like a store of energy on which he must draw for a lifetime: one volt of it properly directed will bring a character to life.
Graham Greene
#81. Experiencing life makes you a better writer, and writing enhances your experience of life.
K. M. Bozarth
#82. Want to be a writer? take a good book a good pen and a notepad to bed with you every night of your life.
Ken Scott
#83. Things that only a writer would understand - you're writing a character - you tell that character who she or he is and they stop you and make it clear, they are the ones telling their story. You just have to let them tell it.
Lisa Marbly-Warir
#84. Magic : when you create something from the materials around you to astound and make the audience say "Wow." Magic happens on mundane days. It happens when you least expect it. It brings a spark to our drab and monotonous days.
Avijeet Das
#85. I am happiest sitting against a tree, with my notebook or sketchpad on my knee, capturing the moment.
Fennel Hudson
#86. Use all this life to make yourself a great writer, thoughtful and kind, slowly, surely over the years.
T.K. Naliaka
#87. To be a writer and political is a dangerous thing. To be a writer and apolitical is even more dangerous. Art is right, left; in truth, it has only one direction and that is forward.
Chris Campanioni
#88. Nothing expresses Kafka's innermost sense of self more profoundly than his lapidary definition of "writing as a form of prayer": he was a writer. Not a man who wrote, but one to whom writing was the only form of being, the only means of defying death in life.
Ernst Pawel
#89. A great writer has a high respect for values. His essential function is to raise life to the dignity of thought, and this he does by giving it a shape.
Andre Maurois
#90. Writing fulfils an insatiable drive. Finishing the story satisfies my thirst. But I must keep drinking until the story quenches a buyer.
Ace Antonio Hall
#91. If you are a real writer, then just surrender to the writer's life, all of it, even the bad stuff. When you do that, the beauty appears: the peace, the meaning, the joy, the fulfillment, the sense that you are doing what you were born to do and what could be better, in the end, than that?
Lauren B. Davis
#92. In our age, when technology is gaining control over life, when material well-being is considered the most important goal, when the influence of religion has been weakened everywhere in the world, a special responsibility lies upon the writer.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
#93. ...{N}othing is harder for the developing writer than overcoming his anxiety that he is fooling himself and cheating or embarrassing his family and friends.
John Gardner
#94. For Christians who desire to write, the call to read broadly is an absolute necessity, for writing is, in many ways, the process of digesting and synthesizing not only the thoughts and experiences of a writer's own life, but the writer's intellectual wanderings as well.
Gene C. Fant Jr.
#95. If you are destined to become a writer, you can't help it. If you can help it, you aren't destined to become a writer. The frustrations and disappointments, not even to mention the unspeakable loneliness, are too unbearable for anyone who doesn't have a deep sense of being unable to avoid writing.
Donald Harington
#96. Sooner or later every writer evolves his own definition of a story.
Mine is: A reflection of life plus beginning and end (life seems not to have either) and a meaning.
Mary O'Hara
#97. I was surprised to find myself in tears. Because these women had trusted me to help as a writer, I began to see a way of bringing together two things - writing and activism - that until then had torn me apart in everyday life.
Gloria Steinem
#98. Life's like a book: What matters is the hook.
Be it short or long, just live it strong.
Whether it's five stars, or how near or far, just soar!
Ana Claudia Antunes
#99. In creation myths, a god shapes mud or clay into living form, much like a potter throws a pot or a sculptor reveals the statue within a block of marble. But a writer has to create his own clay or stone before he can begin shaping life from it.
Stuart Dybek
#100. A writer's life is so hazardous that anything he does is bad for him. Anything that happens to him is bad: failure's bad, success is bad; impoverishment is bad, money is very, very bad. Nothing good can happen ... Except the act of writing.
E.L. Doctorow
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
