On Being A Writer Quotes

#1. I wanted to leave home, and I didn't know where I was going or what I was going to do or what would happen. That's youth, though. Being fixated on things. I was fixated on being a writer.

James Avery

#2. I always advise children who ask me for tips on being a writer to read as much as they possibly can. Jane Austen gave a young friend the same advice, so I'm in good company there.

J.K. Rowling

#3. My point of view as a writer has to be a lot more ego-less than just like being some performer on stage with a hairdo.

Tift Merritt

#4. I really, deeply believe in the primacy of character. I believe that my job as a writer is to put a believable human being on a page.

Ayana Mathis

#5. The hardest thing about being a writer is convincing your wife that lying on the sofa is work.

John Hughes

#6. A writer in someone who spends years patiently trying to discover the second being inside him, and the world that makes him who he is.

Orhan Pamuk

#7. In acting, you have a writer, a director, a character - you're working through being another person - and the irony I always tell people is when I acted early on as a teenager, it actually kept me out of trouble.

Juliette Lewis

#8. The great advantage of being a writer is that you can spy on people. You're there, listening to every word, but part of you is observing. Everything is useful to a writer, you see - every scrap, even the longest and most boring of luncheon parties.

Graham Greene

#9. There is no one like you on this planet. Not everyone may have the gift of being a good writer, but each one of us has a story to tell.

K.J. Kilton

#10. I spent all my time on my movies worried that people were eating and that the schedule was being kept, so to have experts in those areas giving me the brain space as a writer and director is huge.

Lena Dunham

#11. I think a writer is not an ideal husband ... Writers tend to get off into their own heads and not notice the people that they're living with, or they get irritable with the people that they're living with when the people insist on being noticed.

Roy Blount Jr.

#12. In the nature of things, a person engaged in the flimsy business of expressing himself on paper is dependent on the large general privilege of being heard. Any intimation that this privilege may be revoked throws a writer into panic.

E.B. White

#13. Worst part of being a writer: having to tell my toddler that I can't play with her because I'm working. Keep in mind that working consists of me at home with a laptop on my lap sitting on the couch. It doesn't look like working. I don't have a hammer or anything.

Chelsea Cain

#14. Being a writer, I take thing seriously (not too seriously). I may be a young writer/self publisher, I do love to write and I want to share my stories to the world. but more importantly, I do take writing seriously.

Simi Sunny

#15. When I first thought of being a writer I had visions of stacks of books in stores with my name on them, that sort of thing. But I never imagined this would be the reaction.

Augusten Burroughs

#16. A writer hopes never to offend, but if he must, pray let him offend the gods before the reviewers.

Chila Woychik

#17. I was really bored, pretty antisocial, and not much of a joiner, and people thought that was a problem. I hated high school. In a way, it was good ... I think, for a writer, it's good to be comfortable with being on the outside.

Deborah Ellis

#18. Tell him I think writing is lousy," Bill said. "Go on, tell him. Tell him I'm ashamed of being a writer.

Ernest Hemingway,

#19. And it's just anathema to being a writer. It's not healthy. But in another way, when I'm writing, what it's about for me is being good on the page. None of that noise could change the way I feel about my writing. Which is not always particularly positive.

Zadie Smith

#20. In the end, being the writer on set is a bit like having organised a big party, but you're not allowed to eat or drink anything. You just have to stand in the corner.

John Niven

#21. In the middle of the silence in a writer's house lies an invalid: the book being worked on.

Richard Eder

#22. All the fantasy writers I know have a way of dwelling on their own fears and phobias. A writer spends his life being his own psychiatrist.

Charles Beaumont

#23. There are a lot of people who talk about a formula for being able to start a fan base. But for me, it's been about songs and just being hard on myself as a writer, feeling like there is a purpose to it all.

Corey Smith

#24. Available in HTML and CSS. In the absence of a font being found, the web browser will use its default font, which may be a user defined one. Depending on the web browser, a user can in fact override the font defined by the code writer. This may be for personal taste reasons, but may also

Anonymous

#25. A writer of any merit does not worry about being accepted everywhere. He must write to inspire, to change for the better or to challenge the status quo!

Avijeet Das

#26. I love writing on trains. The joy of being a writer is it's all in your head; you don't need materials apart from the laptop. It's like taking your work home with you, so you can feel grounded in your own insane writerly realities wherever you are.

Sadie Jones

#27. Gregory writes of Armageddon as if the Devil is getting off on using him literally to write that iniquitous beast into existence, into the flesh. I believe both Gregory and Jamie Stillingsworth are being used as vessels to bring about the end of days.

A.K. Kuykendall

#28. As a writer one has to take the chance on being a fool.

Anne Sexton

#29. If you're a writer, you'll know it by the distinct feeling of only being able to breathe properly when alone with your characters. All other times, I'm panting
just pining for the next time I can be with them.

Karen Luellen

#30. I write because I am a writer, not because I want to get anything out of it.

H. Raven Rose

#31. Anyone literate can take an implement in hand and make marks on a flat surface. Being a writer, however, seems to be a socially acknowledged role, and one that carries some sort of weight or impressive significance - we hear a capital W on Writer.

Margaret Atwood

#32. Everybody talks about being a writer, angel. If every novel conceived on a bar stool made it into print, there wood not be one tree left standing on God's green Earth.

Irvine Welsh

#33. I prize my downtime, count on it as a writer, a parent, a person. Sometimes I think of Woody Allen's remark about masturbation, that it is sex with someone he loves. I feel as though being alone is hanging out with someone I like.

Anna Quindlen

#34. Being a writer means I sit in a dark (and pretty dank) room off my garage for many hours a day, and in my wallowing moments I can feel as if I'm already on the outside of society, peering wistfully in.

Lauren Groff

#35. I feel very lucky and privileged to be a writer. I feel lucky in the sense that I can branch out into prose and tell different kinds of stories and stuff. But being a writer is so great because you're literally not dependent on anybody.

Sam Shepard

#36. Being the only writer on a successful show is very rewarding.

Steven Moffat

#37. For me, being a writer was never a choice. I was born one. All through my childhood I wrote short stories and stuffed them in drawers. I wrote on everything. I didn't do my homework so I could write.

Laura Hillenbrand

#38. I think the best thing about being a writer is getting to dream. It's constantly viewing life through the "what if?" lens.

Kevin J. Fitzgerald

#39. A lot of very, very big stars were going down and not being seen or heard from again. Kirk took a huge chance in putting a blacklisted writer's name on the screen and somehow or other, he survived it, like he survives everything.

Lee Grant

#40. At middle age, I decide to give up on my dream of being an astronaut and follow my second, to be a writer. Also, I heard there was no smoking in the space station.

Michael Kroft

#41. Being a famous writer is a little like being a tall dwarf. You're on the edge of normality.

John Updike

#42. Being a real writer means being able to do the work on a bad day.

Norman Mailer

#43. I always wanted to be a film-maker when I was younger, not an actor. I was an eight-year-old who dreamed of being a writer on 'The Simpsons,' which was a weird dream to have. But I started taking acting classes as a way to learn how to direct actors and I sort of fell in love with it.

Jonah Hill

#44. Lastly, notice your level of enthusiasm. If you had to decide right now how enthusiastic you are about being a writer, on a scale from one to ten, where one is not at all enthusiastic, and ten is extremely enthusiastic, what is your level of enthusiasm about writing?

Beth Barany

#45. Q: Best part about being a musical theatre book writer?
A: Explaining what that is.

Christy Hall

#46. Just being a writer allows one the maturity to have random conversations with random strangers!

Avijeet Das

#47. My first novel was turned down by half a dozen publishers. And even after having published five or six books, I wasn't making enough money to live on, and was beginning to think I'd have to give up the dream of being a full-time writer.

Ian Rankin

#48. Being a writer is like being in a relationship. If you're not 100% committed to your writing, you will fail to be the best that you can be.

Patti Roberts

#49. To Grandma,
for being my first editor and giving me the best writing advice I've ever received: Christopher, I think you should wait until you're done with elementary school before worrying about being a failed writer.

Chris Colfer

#50. I say that being a smart writer doesn't make you a good writer. There's obviously a difference between talent and intelligence. And it may be that at some point intelligence begins to impinge on talent, or talent on intelligence.

Gustavo Perez Firmat

#51. Being a writer is an amazing job, but we're all writers, most of us just forget to put our stories down on paper.

Colette Freedman

#52. Being an author is to have a toe in the creative pool and a foot in the vat of commerce.

Fennel Hudson

#53. Had she been hanging on to her dream of being a writer, but only barely hanging on, and something made her let go?

Sherman Alexie

#54. At the outset, my notion of being a writer was that you would have moments of inspiration and moments of frustration, when you'd crumple up your pages and toss them away. On one side, the dustbin would fill up, and on the other side, pages would rise into a novel.

Tom Rachman

#55. My great fear of being attacked or trivialized by my contemporaries made me concentrate on what I was trying to do as a writer. It forced me to draw some conclusions that were my own.

Pat Conroy

#56. The key to being a wonderful writer is not to write. You just get out of the way. Leave room for God to walk in the room. And when I write something that I know is right, I get on my knees and say 'thank you.'

Michael Jackson

#57. My family didn't like me going on the stage, and they didn't much like my being a writer, either.

P.L. Travers

#58. Being a writer, I'd never judged a book by its cover, but I suppose that the way a book carried itself gave you a bit of an insight on what was on the inside.

Lindsay Patton

#59. My film school is making movies. But, I do think that being an actor has served me immensely, as both a writer and director, in terms of knowing what is playable and what will be fun to play, for actors, and also how to communicate to actors on set, and not screw them up and get them in their head.

Josh Radnor

#60. 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

#61. 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

#62. Siren voices tell me, 'You don't have to keep going on.' And then you think, 'I'm a writer. What do I do? Sit there watching my wife clean up?' I don't know. I like being a writer.

Terry Pratchett

#63. If you are a reader, you are already halfway to being a writer," she says. "For you have a love of words and pleasure from seeing them on a page. And if you are a writer, then you will find that you are driven to write. It is a gift that demands to be shared. You cannot be a silent singer.

Philippa Gregory

#64. The main impetus for being a writer is thinking, 'I could invent another world. I'm not terribly keen on this one.'

Mark Haddon

#65. Being a writer is like going on holidays everyday ... without the expense

Jennifer Larmar

#66. There is freedom in being a writer and writing. It is fulfilling your function. I used to think freedom meant doing whatever you want. It means knowing who you are, what you are supposed to be doing on this earth, and then simply doing it.

Natalie Goldberg

#67. I began running on an everyday basis after I became a writer. As being a writer requires sitting at a desk for hours a day, without getting some exercise you'd quickly get out of shape and gain weight, I figured.

Haruki Murakami

#68. There was no audience for my books. The Indians didn't regard me as an Indian and North Americans couldn't conceive of me of a North American writer, not being white and brought up on wheat germ. My fiction got lost.

Bharati Mukherjee

#69. I think there's a lot of really good programming on television. What I've noticed, through the years of being a professional writer, is the watering down process of story. You have to market to the masses and not offend anybody.

Lauren Iungerich

#70. I realised early on that being an author is a hugely misunderstood job.

Sara Sheridan

#71. 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

#72. Why do I write? Out of fear. Out of fear that the memory of the people I write about might go lost. Out of fear that the memory of myself might get lost. Or even just to be shielded by a story, to slip inside a story and stop being recognizable, controllable, subject to blackmail.

Fabrizio De Andre

#73. Being a writer is so great because you're literally not dependent on anybody. Whereas, as an actor, you have to audition or wait for somebody else to make a decision about how to use you, with writing, you can do it anywhere, anytime you want. You don't have to ask permission.

Sam Shepard

#74. I love being a writer because I want to leave something here on earth to make it better, prettier, stronger.

Cynthia Rylant

#75. Having children changes you forever, as a writer and as a human being. I hope it's for the better on both counts, but I guess we'll see.

Brian K. Vaughan

#76. What is hell to a writer? Hell is being too busy to find the time to write or being unable to find the inspiration. Hell is suddenly finding the words but being away from your notebook or typewriter. Hell is when the verses slip away through your fingers and they never return again.

R.M. Engelhardt

#77. Write. No amount of self-inflicted misery, altered states, black pullovers or being publicly obnoxious will ever add up to your being a writer. Writers write. On you go.

A. L. Kennedy

#78. My father was weaned on books. I'm halfway between being weaned on books and weaned on television. And if you're weaned on television, you're not as good a writer as if you were weaned on books.

James Burrows

#79. The cool thing about being a songwriter, or a writer, I guess, in general, you can take on a lot of different things, experience a lot of different things, just by writing about them.

Amos Lee

#80. I do think you should be more careful how you choose your friends. You are so credulous, dear, so easily gulled. I suppose it is being a writer and having so much imagination. If you were older and had more experience of life you would have been on guard at once.

Agatha Christie