Non Writer Quotes

#1. Constant rejection. No security. Career paths being dictated by freelance reviewers. And of course, the terror of the writing desk, of the blank page. Why is it so hard for our non-writer friends to understand this - that it's a job?

Darin Strauss

#2. A writer writes for writers, a non-writer writes for his next-door neighbor or for the manager of the local bank branch, and he fears (often mistakenly) that they would not understand or, in any case, would not forgive his boldness.

Umberto Eco

#3. Because I'm such a creative person, and I've always got my nose in a book, I suppose it was only a matter of time before non-fiction turned into fiction again. But I never consciously set out to become a writer and I never thought I'd be doing the things I'm doing today.

Paul Kane

#4. Writing is a sickness only cured by writing.

Niall Williams

#5. I'm a reluctant writer of non-fiction, in part because I don't really feel qualified.

William Gibson

#6. A non-fiction writer pretty much has the shape of the figure in front of him or her and goes about refining it. A work of non-fiction is not as difficult to write as a work of fiction, but it's not as satisfying in the end.

Chaim Potok

#7. Writing for the love of writing. My muse makes no apologies under this pen name. ;)

Amanda Wylde

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

Lara Biyuts

#9. Writer's block is a fancy term made up by whiners so they can have an excuse to drink alcohol.

Steve Martin

#10. [I]t is the writer's duty to write fiction which promotes virtue, the good, the beautiful, and above all, the true ... It is the writer's duty to hate injustice, to defy the powerful, and to speak for the voiceless. To be ... the severest critics of our own societies.

Edward Abbey

#11. I was working for Time-Life Books from 1962 to 1970, as a staff writer, and after that, I was a journalist. Eventually, I became an editor at 'The Saturday Review' and 'Horizon.'

Edmund White

#12. I'm not a good writer. It takes me a long time to get there. I write and then rewrite and revise and do it over and over until I'm satisfied.

M.J. Rose

#13. I think all characters are facets of the writer. In a way, they have to be if you're going to write them convincingly.

Ruth Ozeki

#14. There are more people involved in telling a story than the writer.

Cecelia Ahern

#15. It is rarely that you see an American writer who is not hopelessly sane.

Margaret Anderson

#16. Struggling writer' e un pleonasm, cuz a writer is always struggling.

Teodor Burnar

#17. It's probably why I'm a short story writer. I tend to remember things in the past in narrative form, in story form, and I grew up around people who told stories all the time.

Tobias Wolff

#18. I think my grandmother Woodrell was most responsible for my becoming a writer. She wasn't quite literate, but was very proud that she attended school as far as the third grade. She worked as a maid, housekeeper and cook.

Daniel Woodrell

#19. It's a luxury being a writer, because all you ever think about is life.

Amy Tan

#20. Teach the writer, not the writing.

Lucy Calkins

#21. Writers are people whose words speak louder than their actions.

Shon Mehta

#22. You are lucky you are a writer because you will sort through this in ways other souls cannot; the bad part is you feel and see all of this in ways non-writers don't.

Ann Hood

#23. In nine out of ten cases the original wish to write is the wish to make oneself felt[ellipsis in source] the non-essential writer never gets past that wish.

Elizabeth Bowen

#24. Granted, I'm more interested in technology than most people, and less interested in politics than most. But I don't like to think about categories. I really see myself as a general non-fiction writer.

James Gleick

#25. In my life, I have come to realize that people are afraid of a revolution. A true revolution doesn't have to be fought with an AK47, because our words and practice of non-violent can move mountains.

Henry Johnson Jr

#26. A writer creates like the sculptor, with one exception: The writer must create his block of marble, before chiseling away the non-essentials.

Garry Fitchett

#27. In my opinion there are two basic questions that any writer tries to answer. "What is?" is the question non-fiction asks. "What if?" is the question fiction asks. That's the question I'm more interested in.

Patrick Rothfuss

#28. I used to hammer away at the idea of simplicity.
In both fiction and non-fiction, there's only one question and one answer. 'What happened?' the reader asks. 'This is what happened,' the writer responds. 'This ... and this ... and this, too.' Keep it simple. It's the only sure way home.

Stephen King

#29. Miller is not really a writer but a non-stop talker to whom someone has given a typewriter.

Gerald Brenan

#30. I read very widely, both non-fiction and fiction, so I don't think there's a single writer who influences me.

Peter Benchley

#31. Initial work is on period research where the historical markers are absolutely non-negotiable. Once that is established, a writer can take creative liberties in terms of chronology to suit the story.

Ashwin Sanghi

#32. 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

#33. Whatever they do, criminals and non-criminals act in particular ways. Some writers, for instance, use computers, others pen and paper. Some write in the morning, some at night. Each writer has a distinct style, with variations in grammar, sentence structure, and voice.

Ronald Kessler

#34. For every reader and writer of steampunk fiction, there are probably hundreds or thousands of other activists who gleefully embrace some non-written manifestation of the steampunk ethos.

Paul Di Filippo

#35. For me the path to the literary goes through the non - literary. For this reason it surprises me that I am a writer, or that people speak of me as a writer. I'm flattered, but I don't quite believe it.

Gustavo Perez Firmat

#36. [August] Derleth tried to prevent any other (non-Derleth-approved) writer from writing Cthulhu Mythos stories.If Lovecraft had wanted bad writers to avoid Cthulhu Mythos stories, he wouldn't have written back to August Derleth.

Kenneth Hite

#37. I like thinking of the writer as a kind of curator; the collection as curiosity cabinet - in a non-demeaning, non-objectifying sense - but an array, a set of offerings.

Leslie Jamison

#38. A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity.
[Letter to Max Brod, July 5, 1922]

Franz Kafka

#39. 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

#40. I have yet to see a piece of writing, political or non-political, that doesn't have a slant. All writing slants the way a writer leans, and no man is born perpendicular, although many men are born upright.

E.B. White

#41. For me, movies and television are interesting because they are the dominant storytelling form of our time. My first love will always be fiction, and especially novels, but I'm a writer ... I write poetry and essays and criticism and I'd love to write a whole play, and sometimes I even write scripts.

Jess Walter

#42. London as an actor, writer, and part owner of the playing company the

William Shakespeare

#43. If you're going to be a writer, the first essential is just to write. Do not wait for an idea. Start writing something and the ideas will come. You have to turn the faucet on before the water starts to flow.

Louis L'Amour

#44. 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

#45. Sometimes I create a character from a scrap - a mere mention that has been left behind.

Sara Sheridan

#46. This assignment could damn well project all the words across my face and the ink stain my hands a gory mess before I finished it.

Jazz Feylynn

#47. For the fiction writer himself the whole story is the meaning, because it is an experience, not an abstraction.

Flannery O'Connor

#48. Don't let anyone discourage you from writing. If you become a professional writer, there are plenty of editors, reviewers, critics, and book buyers to do that.

Jane Yolen

#49. The public has no idea that writing is a disease, and that the writer who publishes is like a beggar who exhibits his sores.

Michael Kruger

#50. Winter collapsed on us that year. It knelt, exhausted, and stayed.

Emily Fridlund

#51. For a country to have a great writer is like having another government,

Mark Bowden

#52. As a writer, you sit around a computer all day, and it's too easy to open another tab and keep Rotten Tomatoes there.

Evan Daugherty

#53. A Writer is a writer, no matter what s/he writes.

Gabriella Slade

#54. A writer is always working with whatever she's managed to store in the brainpan or puzzle out about the world.

Anna Quindlen

#55. I really want my career to be as an actor-writer-director-producer, you know? I don't know what will be stronger than the other.

Danny Strong

#56. Ideally, the writer needs no audience other than the few who understand that it is immodest and greedy to want more.

Gore Vidal

#57. The author apologizes for being unable to afford a ghost writer, which explains the lack of a distinctive prose style.

Richard Armour

#58. As I have encountered difficult moments in my own life, I have been privileged to learn from the great men I have come to know as a writer.

Candice Millard

#59. Before I'm a writer, I'm definitely a reader and when I read memoir, I really want it to be true.

Augusten Burroughs

#60. A multifaceted writer, very easy on the surface to pin down but incredibly difficult once you actually read him with any depth.

Joshua Ferris

#61. Telling what must not be told is one of the writer's primary tasks. It is also a difficult and dangerous one.

Viet Thanh Nguyen

#62. A good writer does not write as people write, but as he writes.

Baron De Montesquieu

#63. It is by sitting down to write every morning that he becomes a writer. Those who do not do this remain amateurs.

Gerald Brenan

#64. I think you become a writer when you stop writing for yourself or your teachers and start thinking about readers.

Avi

#65. Risk is important to me as a writer, reader, and editor. I love stories that take a premise or style that seems unlikely to succeed, whose first paragraphs risk a raised eyebrow or groan, and whose last paragraphs are then all that much sweeter a triumph. Basically, I love being proved wrong.

Caitlin Horrocks

#66. I think a writer should always be surprised; and the more I write, the more it seems that the language itself, when explored with humility, is always deeper and more accurate than what the author thought he had in mind.

Ciaran Carson

#67. And the ideal travel writer is consumed not just with a will to know. He is also moved by a powerful will to teach.

Paul Fussell

#68. 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

#69. W. P. Kinsella, who was born on a farm near Edmunton, Alberta, has earned wide recognition for his wild imagination and rash humor as a writer.

Gerald Vizenor

#70. To do justice to a lifelong dream of being a writer, I must give it the intense concentration and focus I gave to track. To do both with excellence is not possible. It is with a sense of sadness and joyous anticipation that I leave track and move on.

Florence Griffith Joyner

#71. No writer, no matter how gifted, immortalizes himself unless he has crystallized into expressive and original phrase the eternal sentiments and yearnings of the human heart.

Alfred De Vigny

#72. I'm not a playwright; I'm a writer who loves theater.

Rodman Philbrick

#73. Every writer making a secondary world wishes in some measure to be a real maker, or hopes that he is drawing on reality: hopes that the peculiar quality of this secondary world (if not all the details) are derived from Reality, or are flowing into it.

J.R.R. Tolkien

#74. To be a good writer, you not only have to write a great deal but you have to care. You do not have to have a complicated moral philosophy. But a writer always tries, I think, to be a part of a solution, to understand a little about life and to pass this on.

Anne Lamott

#75. A perception is not a story, and no amount of sensitivity can make a story-writer out of you if you just plain don't have a gift for telling a story.

Flannery O'Connor

#76. People always want to identify a writer with their protagonist.

Monica Ali

#77. Having a little talent as a writer is like having a little talent as a brain surgeon.

James Jones

#78. Robert Frost said, No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader.

Kim Addonizio