Quotes About Being A Writer

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

Richard Armour

#2. 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

#3. 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

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

Amy Tan

#5. A novel I read when I was about 17 or 18 - 'The World According to Garp,' by John Irving - really made me want to become a writer. The character of Garp is a novelist, and at the time, the whole lifestyle of being a writer was hugely appealing to me.

John Niven

#6. Only a person with the true heart of a dictionary-writer would be lying in bed, three days after being stabbed in the gut, worrying about his P's.

Kristin Cashore

#7. No one is born a writer; literacy is a peculiar mode of being, but I was all about stories from a very early age, before reading.

Rebecca Solnit

#8. 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

#9. I was kind of an outsider growing up, and I preferred reading to being with other kids. When I was about seven, I started to write my own books. I never thought of myself as wanting to be a writer - I just was one.

Ann Hood

#10. The writer's no different. When he's rejected, that paper is rejected, in a sense, a sizeable fragment of the writer is rejected as well. It's a piece of himself that's being turned down.

Rod Serling

#11. It can be depressing when no one takes interest, and a lack of response makes the writer question why they're writing at all. To have one's writing rejected is like you, yourself, are being rejected.

Elizabeth Clements

#12. Sleeplessness and being a writer seem to go together hand in hand.

Jason E. Hodges

#13. 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

#14. Every human being has hundreds of separate people living under his skin. The talent of a writer is his ability to give them their separate names, identities, personalities and have them relate to other characters living with him.

Mel Brooks

#15. If there is a category of human being for whom his work ought to speak for itself, it is the writer.

Isaac Asimov

#16. I learned so much by being an actor, and part of my sort-of development as a writer is big thanks to the scripts I read in my acting life.

Joel Edgerton

#17. In my early thirties I was working in television as a researcher. I was really stuck for a period of five years. I got to TV when I was thirty. I hated being a music writer, and kept wondering why I couldn't be doing the exciting things that my friends were doing in television.

Mary Harron

#18. Because there are hundreds of different ways to say one thing, I, being a writer, songwriter, and poet, speak childishly and incoherently. In speech there is so much to decide in so little time.

Criss Jami

#19. Coming from Canada, being a writer and Jewish as well, I have impeccable paranoia credentials.

Mordecai Richler

#20. Are you sorry? Do you wish you could do it all again and go off and write novels instead of being a teacher?
No. You can't trade what is for what might have been.

Lurlene McDaniel

#21. To be honest, I've never had an easy relationship with being a writer, though I persist.

Peter Gizzi

#22. Being a writer is great, and being a parent is great, and I hate Marching Band.

MaryJanice Davidson

#23. If I were a writer, how I would enjoy being told the novel is dead. How liberating to work in the margins, outside a central perception. You are the ghoul of literature. Lovely.

Don DeLillo

#24. I had discovered that being a writer gave you a lot of license to fiddle with the truth, but I'd better not get into the habit of it.

Robert McCammon

#25. The best thing about being a writer is that 'work' is always something you love, plus usually accompanied by tea, coffee and cakes of some sort.

Jamie L. Harding

#26. I am a writer: to the core of my being, the marrow of my bones ... to the depth of my very soul. I am a writer.

Valjeanne Jeffers

#27. What I try to capture as a writer is the feeling of being alive, of being awake.

Jenny Offill

#28. If a writer knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one ninth of it being above water.

Ernest Hemingway,

#29. My dad taught me that to be a writer is a decision and a habit. It's not anything lofty, and it doesn't have that much to do with inspiration. You have to develop the habit of being a certain way with yourself. You do it at the debt of honor.

Anne Lamott

#30. 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

#31. A writer always begins by being too complicated - he's playing at several games at once.

Jorge Luis Borges

#32. 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

#33. I've enjoyed being a famous writer-except that every once in a while you have to write something.

Ken Kesey

#34. Personally, I see little distinction between an artistic mentality and criminality. You couldn't possibly create a compelling story without some wickedness or some fascination with the disgusting. Being good is a hindrance to a writer.

Russell Smith

#35. One of the things I prize most about being a writer is its license - you could even say injunction - to be curious, to follow anything anywhere and see where it might take you, how it can transform you, whether in content or form.

Gregory Allen Howard

#36. I think being a writer was a crappy job when you just had typewriters. It was crappy when we just had ink and paper. And it's sort of crappy now. It's always just you and the page. That doesn't change.

Colson Whitehead

#37. Most people, using everything they have in real life, cannot take hold of you the way a talented writer can without even being there. Talent is the ability to mesmerize people when you are nowhere near. Talent is the ability to make something that is more stunning than human presence.

Elizabeth Wurtzel

#38. The problem with being a writer/director: unless you're really disciplined, you start adding projects, and you have to make time to make them. Because you have to write them ... no one else is writing them for me.

Cary Fukunaga

#39. I think the trick of being a writer is to basically put your cards out there all the time and be willing to be as in the dark about what happens next as your reader would be at that time.

George Saunders

#40. As a writer, it's a great narrative tool to have that character who is slightly detached but at the same time observant of his reality, because I think that's pretty much what being a writer is - being there, watching and internalizing.

Dinaw Mengestu

#41. 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

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

P.L. Travers

#43. Being a writer in Hollywood is like going to Hitler's Eagle Nest with a great idea for a bar mitzvah.

David Mamet

#44. There is no motivation higher than being a good writer.

Tom Wolfe

#45. It never occurred to me to be a film director, partly because I hadn't seen a single film by a female director, but I liked the idea of being a writer moving to Hollywood and being unhappy; that sounded romantic and fabulous to me.

Mary Harron

#46. I'm tired of being considered a lesbian writer, tired of being a science-fiction writer, tired of being a thriller writer. I'm a writer. Period. Story matters to me.

Nicola Griffith

#47. With 'Moreau,' it's been particularly confusing because I started out being the writer of the screenplay and then trying to be the director, then being moved from being the director and having to become the dog extra, it makes some kind of sense to suddenly become a character in the story.

Richard Stanley

#48. I've always wanted to be a writer. I've been writing since I was probably four years old - it was nonsense, but it was still my little attempts at being a storyteller.

Roxane Gay

#49. Hope E. L .James doesn't think I'm being a prankster. I really want to adapt her novels for the screen. Christian Grey is a writer's dream.

Bret Easton Ellis

#50. One of the difficulties of being a writer must be that you create drama that you can't live out. That's one of the wonderful things about acting.

Anjelica Huston

#51. I'm a singer and a writer first. I started to rap by accident, being playful.

Kesha

#52. The greatest thing about being a writer is the fact you never have to learn lines - you get to write them!

Neill Bartlett

#53. My dad, being a jingle writer, and my mom, being a jingle singer, they hooked me up with some people when I was a kid that worked with children's jingle singing groups. I used to sing jingles as a kid.

Reeve Carney

#54. My background is really being a writer's actor - that seems to be the way I work best, bringing out the best of writing. There's a whole range of acting skills, and some people can be astonishing with very poor material. That's not me; my skill is essentially unlocking the writing.

Lindsay Duncan

#55. I often tell people to stop being afraid of writing bad poetry, or bad anything. I think that a lot of times, when people claim that they have writer's block, or that they get stuck, it's just because they're scared of writing bad things.

Sarah Kay

#56. My first book is really comparable to what I do now, where it's pretty surreal and strange at moments, but that being my first book - I wrote that when I was 22; it came out when I was 24 - and it was just really overwritten. I just didn't trust myself as a writer to say something once.

Joe Meno

#57. There is Harlan Ellison the human being, who takes a crap a couple of times a day, and who farts, and who eats chicken croquettes, if I can find them. And then there is the writer, this writer-person, who is a much finer person than I. Much more orderly, much more meaningful. Worthier, than I [am].

Harlan Ellison

#58. I think it's very, very, very hard to get a book published. I never want to be one of those teachers that say, 'don't do this, ' because how sad would the world be if people didn't create art and write? But, it's not an easy journey being a writer.

Alyson Richman

#59. I have a much greater ambition to be the best racket player than the best prose writer.

William Hazlitt

#60. 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

#61. Writing is a way of living. It doesn't quite matter that there are too many books for the number of readers in the world to read them. It's a way of being alive for the writer.

Rachel Kushner

#62. 'being published' is not the same as being a real writer.

Scarlett Thomas

#63. I wanted to be understood. As a human-being, and as a writer. That meant getting to (truly) know myself- away from the opinions, beliefs, assumptions, criticism, and judgement of others. It meant re-learning language... to speak concisely. It meant learning the language of my heart and soul.

Cheri Bauer

#64. I know who I am and what I'm doing in my life and what I've accomplished and continue to accomplish as a performer, as a writer, as an artist, as a person, as a human being.

Justin Bieber

#65. There's no path to being a writer that's applicable to everyone. Some young writers have the fortitude to work in a vacuum. For me, it was important to have some sense that my failures weren't unique.

Jonathan Dee

#66. 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

#67. Being a comedy writer gives you permission to be an outsider and poke fun at what people think about other people.

Michael Patrick King

#68. 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

#69. 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

#70. I am very fortunate in that I have spent pretty much my whole life being a writer, and before I was a writer, I was a storyteller.

Isobelle Carmody

#71. Being a reporter took me out of myself and that shaped me as a writer.

Tom Barbash

#72. I have never pretended to be a great writer. I am totally immodest about being a great reporter and a good news writer. I write fast and I write accurately, nearly as accurately as anybody can be, and that's my skill.

Walter Cronkite

#73. 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

#74. 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

#75. Reading was not just an escape or a Band-Aid; it was a deep form of feeling seen and recognized, and being able to see and recognize other kindred spirits. My dad was a writer, too, which also likely had something to do with that.

Garth Risk Hallberg

#76. When you got source material, whether it's a play or a book - a great writer often appreciates being adapted and developed. It's like when you go see a production of a great play and they are always different. There is always room for interpretation.

Jude Law

#77. I wanted to be a librarian from a very young age. Some of my earliest memories are being taken to the local library. I ended up working as a bookseller. Becoming a writer was the logical offshoot of being a reader.

Michael Scott

#78. I got a fortune cookie that said, "To remember is to understand." I have never forgotten it. A good judge remembers what it was like to be a lawyer. A good editor remembers being a writer. A good parent remembers what it was like to be a child.

Anna Quindlen

#79. Paul's the writer. Yeah, I wrote a little of that stuff, but that's just technically true. In spirit, and in essence of the truth, it doesn't matter. So I don't know, maybe I'm being foolish for not being technical. Yeah, I wrote a certain portion of the things.

Art Garfunkel

#80. I seriously doubt I would ever have written the first story had I not been a lawyer. I never dreamed of being a writer. I wrote only after witnessing a trial.

John Grisham

#81. If you can come up with a snappy little slogan, then you have a future in winning tagline competitions or being a political speech writer.

Mark Victor Hansen

#82. The difference between being a part-time writer and a full-time writer is like the difference between dating someone and living with them. Some of the romance is gone, but you learn things you'd never know just by dating.

Scott Westerfeld

#83. I'm a writer, so I interview people all the time, and I think of it as being a very creative process. Giving interviews is actually one of the most creative parts of the film promotion process.

Aaron Rose

#84. I never studied writing, but I'd always been a reader and had a secret fantasy about being a writer.

Jon Krakauer

#85. 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

#86. The planet is populated by human beings, of which there are only two sexes, and the role of the writer is to explore otherness, other realities. So the idea of a man exploring what it's like to be a woman doesn't strike me as being that wild or crazy an idea.

Yann Martel

#87. I'm a fifty-three-year-old writer who can remember being a ten-year-old writer and who expects someday to be an eighty-year-old writer.

Octavia E. Butler

#88. I'm not interested in the fact that a writer may label himself as being intellectual or anti-intellectual. l'm really interested in the stuff he's turning out.

Jorge Luis Borges

#89. The great thing about being a writer is that you are always recreating yourself.

Martin Cruz Smith

#90. 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

#91. The goal, I suppose, any fiction writer has, no matter what your subject, is to hit the human heart and the tear ducts and the nape of the neck and to make a person feel something about the characters are going through and to experience the moral paradoxes and struggles of being human.

Tim O'Brien

#92. Apparently, now, though, we writers and artists are not allowed to give offence. We must not question, criticise or insult the other, for fear of being hounded and murdered. These days a writer without bodyguards can hardly be considered serious. A bad review is the least of our problems.

Hanif Kureishi

#93. There's a powerful magic about being a writer that I still marvel at.

Sidney Lumet

#94. If I was switched from whatever I'm doing, and I was, for some reason, made the chief football writer in any newspaper, then I'd retire. I'd go back to being a barber.

Steve Bunce

#95. I have never thought that I have sacrificed anything being a writer. That might not be true, maybe I have sacrificed something. Maybe I've given something up, but I can't think of it.

Walter Mosley

#96. USAGE, n. The First Person of the literary Trinity, the Second and Third being Custom and Conventionality. Imbued with a decent reverence for this Holy Triad an industrious writer may hope to produce books that will live as long as the fashion.

Ambrose Bierce

#97. 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

#98. I've always said the hardest aspect of the job of being a writer is writing.

Bob Mayer

#99. As a reader myself, which precedes my being a writer, of course, I read in order to enter another world.

Lynne Tillman

#100. That's why I love being a writer. My imagination can take me places I may never see except in my mind's eye.

Pearl Cleage