Lonely Writer Quotes

#1. No. No, it was a lonely writer I met one stormy day in Laguna Beach. He had a poem about Thelonious Monk that he sealed in a tin can and labeled Campbell's Cream of Piano Soup. Later I hear he killed himself to avoid the draft.

Tom Robbins

#2. I was amazed by the fact that I was not the only writer living, not the only young man "with a locomotive in his chest, and that's a fact," not the only youth with a million hungers and not one of them appeasable, not the only one who is lonely among multitudes, and does not know why.

Jack Kerouac

#3. What a lonely and silly thing it is to be an Armenian writer in America.

William, Saroyan

#4. Technically it was FLOTUS's job to extend the invitations, but the idea that Mrs. Clinton would take responsibility for someone under her command? Laughable. I surely never saw it.

Gary J. Byrne

#5. The actions of a human being, even of fifteen months of age, may not be without significance to a sympathetic eye.

Dorothy Canfield Fisher

#6. Men may die like lambs and yet have their place forever with the goats.

Matthew Henry

#7. As an actor, I was a fantastic rebel. Then I became a directorial rebel and understood rebels from both sides. So now I am a friend who gives advice - not one who knows more, necessarily, but who shares ideas.

Maximilian Schell

#8. The only permanence was fluid. Change was all that mattered.

Frank Herbert

#9. I'm 100 percent Jewish by blood, but by education I'm nothing. By affiliation I'm nothing.

Joseph Brodsky

#10. The writer labors in isolation, yet all that intensive, lonely work is in the service of communicating, is an attempt to reach another person.

Betsy Lerner

#11. Growing up a lonely only child prepared me for the years of solitude spent as a writer; years spent in the company of people who don't exist, imaginary people you have conversations with. It's a paid form of madness, this writing stuff.

Debi Gliori

#12. The writer's curse is that even in solitude, no matter its duration, he never grows lonely or bored.

Criss Jami

#13. Trying to write music, be in a band and keep it all happening is one of the hardest, morale-destroying, heartbreaking things you will ever try to do - and that's when it's going well.

Henry Rollins

#14. Being lonely is not a bad thing for a writer.

Chuck Palahniuk

#15. Writing is a lonely business, which if allowed publicity and socializing it might deteriorate. Supportive people understand the need of a writer to withdraw to the solitude of oneself.

Gloria D. Gonsalves

#16. The individual writer is a lonely figure in the wilderness of agents, editors, chain bookstores, and dwindling numbers of independents. The stronger MWA can be, the better it can serve us, and the more respect it can bring to bear in dealing with the problems most of us face every day.

Charles Todd

#17. Government is not the solution, but rather the cause of our problems.

Ronald Reagan

#18. No one in the modern world is more lonely than the writer with a literary conscience.

Ellen Glasgow

#19. You're a writer," she said. "You get to live someone else's life every time you write a book. But I'm stuck with mine. It's lonely.

Ava Sinclair

#20. Writing is a lonely job. Even if a writer socializes regularly, when he gets down to the real business of his life, it is he and his type writer or word processor. No one else is or can be involved in the matter.

Isaac Asimov

#21. I'm still lonely and it's a glorification of something I'm not finished with. I don't want to be distracted from my work by other people, but the absence of it all distracts me from my work and that's why I run towards the city, to get a little glimpse of it.

Charlotte Eriksson

#22. I know why you picked her," Frank says, still sitting on the grass. "She's like you, sort of. A writer. Unhappy. Wishing she had someone who understood her. That's what killed her- being lonely.

Albert Borris

#23. Writer is always alone. But every author is a creator, and gods are lonely.

Lara Biyuts

#24. You have to be lonely to be a writer

Edna O'Brien

#25. That process by which you become a writer is a pretty lonely one. We don't have a group apprenticeship like a violinist might training for an orchestra.

Anne Rice

#26. Leave me to die a lonely death.
An artist's death.
A writer's playground.
A painter's background.
A philosopher's bread and butter.
An endeavor that we
all face. I just hope that
I'm not the only one
there.

A.P. Sweet

#27. This new happiness had angles. Happiness like his was real; it had a jewel-cut shadow, and he could lose it.

Karen Russell

#28. A city full of eight million people. It was all rather lonely sometimes.

Kelly Moran

#29. Gram, you should have been a romance writer." Creighton wasn't her soul mate. The man was probably just lonely, living in such a remote area.
"You know, I might just give that a try. Just think, Effie Munro, erotic-romance author pens "hawt" stories from her beautiful Scottish estate.

Vonnie Davis

#30. Writing is alone, but I don't think it's lonely. Ask any writer if they feel lonely when they're writing their book, and I think they'll say no.

Margaret Atwood

#31. When I got older I decided I wanted to be a real writer. I tried to write about real things. I wanted to describe the world, because to live in an undescribed world was too lonely.

Nicole Krauss

#32. I have rituals for cleaning out resentments, disappointments, heartbreak, depression and for work. One of the things I do is go over old stuff if I have been unable to write for a while.

Hubert Selby Jr.

#33. I used to feel that I spent too much of my time in my pajamas doing nothing, and I'd think 'in the time that I don't spend writing, I could raise a family of five.' In a lot of ways, being a writer is lonely and alienating.

Elizabeth Wurtzel

#34. The writer's way is rough and lonely, and who would choose it while there are vacancies in more gracious professions, such as, say, cleaning out ferryboats?

Dorothy Parker

#35. People make interesting assumptions about the profession. The writer is a mysterious figure, wandering lonely as a cloud, fired by inspiration, or perhaps a cocktail or two.

Sara Sheridan

#36. I just played one of the bad guys in Hercules 3D, and I had cornrows. People moved away from me in elevators, that's for sure. I wore them for about three months. After a while, they get a little gnarly, and you have to redo them.

Johnathon Schaech

#37. For both writer and reader, the novel is a lonely, physically inactive affair. Only the imagination races.

Mary McCarthy

#38. The writer works in a lonely way.

Irwin Shaw

#39. Writing is such a lonely work that I try to keep myself cheered up.

William Zinsser

#40. Being a writer can be a very lonely profession, but having a network of people who can sympathize with everything you're going through - from contract issues to the terror of changing your novel from past- to present-tense - is an invaluable asset.

Lisa Graff