Top 100 Quotes About Writers And Writing
#1. A lot of writers ... sit in a log cabin by the lake and put their feet up by the fire in the silence and write. If you can have that that's all very well, but the true writer will learn to write anywhere
even in prison.
Louis Auchincloss
#2. Us writers all like each other and want to write stories with each other; we're having a good time.
Charles Soule
#3. 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
#4. I don't feel when I'm writing that I'm drawing from any other writer, but of course I must be. The writers I've admired have been not so very different from myself: Evelyn Waugh, for example, that kind of crystalline prose. And I've always admired W. Somerset Maugham more than any other writer.
Charles McCarry
#5. No.'
It's not a bad word.
And it is very important to use at times.
Practice saying it in the mirror.
It's empowering.
Christy Hall
#6. I'm not one of those writers I learned about who get up in the morning, put a piece of paper in their typewriter machine and start writing. That I've never understood.
Wole Soyinka
#7. And there he would lie all day long on the lawn brooding presumably over his poetry, till he reminded one of a cat watching birds, when he had found the word, and her husband said, "Poor old Augustus--he's a true poet," which was high praise from her husband.
Virginia Woolf
#8. To present a whole world that doesn't exist and make it seem real, we have to more or less pretend we're polymaths. That's just the act of all good writing.
William Gibson
#9. I can't recommend technical writing as a day job for fiction writers because it's going to be hard to write all day and then come home and write fiction.
Ted Chiang
#10. A writer paradoxically seeks the truth and tells lies every step of the way. It's a lie if you make something up. But you make it up in the name of the truth, and then you give your heart to expressing it clearly.
Anne Lamott
#11. It seems to me that many writers, by virtue of environments of culture, art and education, slip into writing because of their environments.
Robert E. Howard
#12. To these things do writers sink; and then the critics tell them that they "talk for effect"; and then the writers answer: "What the devil else should we talk for? Ineffectualness?
G.K. Chesterton
#13. Dive again and again into the river of uncertainty. Create in the dark, only then can you recognize the light.
Jyrki Vainonen
#14. Growing up, I used to climb out my window onto the roof and look up at the stars. There, in the quiet, I would write stories inside my head.
Christy Hall
#15. You ought to stop everything and write the sacred-words as its flashes in your mind.
Lailah Gifty Akita
#16. All writers begin as readers, and the ones worth reading continue life as more prolific readers than writers.
Thomas Swick
#17. Probably having fallen in love with music and movies at a young age and then first learning about writing by kind of following the path of writers like Dave Marsh and Lester Bangs and being a rock journalist.
Cameron Crowe
#18. There are a lot of people in this country who really like my writing. And a lot of writers respect me. But the so-called establishment? They hate me.
Hubert Selby Jr.
#19. Two characters and sexy banter do not a book make, damn it.
Sherry Thomas
#20. The night is the balm for the wounded souls of the world.
Avijeet Das
#21. I ended up at fifty, over-the-hill, thinking I had no future. Finally, I realized that I had allowed myself to write less than I could ... As writers true to ourselves, it will always be hard, and if we're good, we'll always be in trouble. Let's be sure we deserve it.
Waldo Salt
#22. Whenever any of these new writers come up who are brilliant, I always realize that you have more talent and more skill than any of them;---but circumstances have prevented you from realizing upon the fact for a long time. [About F. Scott Fitzgerald]
Maxwell Perkins
#23. I was at a party in 1989 and Ian McEwan, Martin Amis and Salman Rushdie were sitting on a sofa wondering where the next generation of great British writers would come from. As we talked, it became clear they had never read a word by me.
Jeanette Winterson
#24. Life baffles me most days. Maybe that's why I write. To try and make sense of it all.
Christy Hall
#25. An unpublished writer should doubt themselves. They should constantly wonder whether what they're creating has merit. And then, having doubted, they should take up their pen and see if they can't make it better.
Johnny Rich
#26. I just think, as writers, especially with a book that takes years to write, you sort of wake up every morning hoping and praying that you can make it work for the day.
Christopher Bollen
#28. Write, write, write! Get your you-know-what in the chair and write more books: write the books of your heart and don't let stress steal your joy.
Sarra Cannon
#29. Good food warms the heart and feeds the soul.
A.D. Posey
#30. 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
#31. The greatest moments of creativity come in absolute solitude, when one's mind is free from distraction and able to probe the depths of the impossible.
Fennel Hudson
#32. If writers just sit and talk about oppression, they are not going to do much writing.
V.S. Naipaul
#33. As you write your novel, you gradually start thinking like some of your characters in it. And at times the writer may lose himself completely in some character.
Avijeet Das
#34. Too many writers get stuck in the trap of writing what they think is funny and not considering who they are writing it for.
Robin Thede
#35. And the writers are good in that it's easy to memorize, and good writing has an innate rhythm to it. And I've always felt that it's easier to get in your head than writing that has very kind of mind busting moments.
Glenn Close
#36. 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
#37. Storytelling answers questions and solves mysteries.
A.D. Posey
#38. Most writers in the course of their careers become thick-skinned and learn to accept vituperation, which in any other profession would be unimaginably offensive, as a healthy counterpoise to unintelligent praise.
Evelyn Waugh
#39. Fiction writers, magicians, politicians and priests are the only people rewarded for entertaining us with their lies
Bangambiki Habyarimana
#40. Since when did books ever solve anything? They only raise more questions than they answer, otherwise they're just fucking entertainment, and I am not here to fucking entertain you.
Zia Haider Rahman
#41. My influence is probably more from American crime writers than any Europeans. And I hardly read any Scandinavian crime before I started writing myself. I wasn't a great crime reader to begin with.
Jo Nesbo
#43. Your writers write these pieces about meaningless startups, meaningless apps and meaningless companies.
Nick Denton
#44. Buffy the Vampire Slayer showed the whole world, and an entire sprawling industry, that writing monsters and demons and end-of-the-world is not hack-work, it can challenge the best. Joss Whedon raised the bar for every writer - not just genre/niche writers, but every single one of us.
Russell T. Davies
#45. The very persons who have taken away my time and space are those who have given me something to say.
Katherine Paterson
#46. The thing about writing in America is that writers in America have an arc. You enter writing as a career, you expect to be successful, and really it's the wrong thing. It's not a profession.
Jamaica Kincaid
#47. I caution writers all the time to slow down and pay more attention to the work in front of them than to the end result. I don't think you write one book and get anywhere. I think you write five books and then maybe you are finally on the right path.
Sue Grafton
#48. Your understanding and interpretation of [a novel] is undoubtedly unique ... and that is the real beauty of the relationship that joins readers, books and writers together in a literary trinity - a bookish triumvirate.
Briar Kit Esme
#49. When you write a manuscript, it feels like being in a relationship with someone. You'll hate it, get bored with it, be pissed of, like you just want to break up. But, just like any relationship, you will fall in love again and again, like you don't want to lose it.
Alvi Syahrin
#50. In one particular chapter in Ulysses, James Joyce imitates every major writing style that's been used by English and American writers over the last 700 years - starting with Beowulf and Chaucer and working his way up through the Renaissance, the Victorian era and on into the 20th century.
Frederick Lenz
#51. It takes great courage to write great books. Find your courage and find your voice.
Kristen Lamb
#52. And I have this little litany of things they can do. And the first one, of course, is to write - every day, no excuses. It's so easy to make excuses. Even professional writers have days when they'd rather clean the toilet than do the writing.
Octavia Butler
#53. Don't let society's defined genre hold you down, be a free spirit and just write, let society be the one to decide where each piece fits in.
Uma Nnenna
#54. Writing with a simplified alphabet checked the power of custom of an oral tradition but implied a decline in the power of expression and the creation of grooves which determined the channels of thought of readers and later writers.
Harold Innis
#55. Don't waste time waiting for inspiration. Begin, and inspiration will find you.
H. Jackson Brown Jr.
#56. I like my whiskey neat and strong just as I like my women. Women who have matured in their minds and bodies; women who have faced the storms of life!
Because my life has always been about the thrill with the raging storms!
Avijeet Das
#57. Pretend you're not spending $3 to read one of my books but buying me a coffee and having a conversation about yourself.
Robin Sacredfire
#58. I think that fiction writers can write about anyone. If you are writing a character, and the only thing they are to you is their otherness, then you haven't written a character.
Hanya Yanagihara
#59. Described as a "workaholic speed-writing freak" by fellow writers, a "creative writing class drill sergeant" by his writing 'padawans', Voinov is a self-confessed geek and has enlarged his days by 12 secret hours in return for the sacrifice of ten albino virgin pygmy hippos.
Aleksandr Voinov
#60. Energy will go into what you love, and what you love will grow. Go for a walk and watch it bloom.
A.D. Posey
#61. Those who can't, and can't teach, translate.
(attrib: F.L. Vanderson)
Mort W. Lumsden
#62. You are lovelier than all the roses in the world.
Avijeet Das
#64. People should know better than to be an ass in front of writers. We immortalize things. Lots of things. And we take liberties with character descriptions.
Michelle M. Pillow
#65. We writers don't really think about whether what we write is good or not. It's too much to worry about. We just put the words down, trying to get them right, operating by some inner sense of pitch and proportion, and from time to time, we stick the stuff in an envelope and ship it to an editor.
Garrison Keillor
#66. We still and always want waking. We should amass half dressed in long lines like tribesmen and shake gourds at each other, to wake up; instead we watch television and miss the show.
Annie Dillard
#67. I do not believe writers should read reviews of their own books, and I do not. If one is not careful one is soon writing to please reviewers and not their audience or themselves.
Louis L'Amour
#68. So writing is not just writing. It is also having a relationship with other writers. And don't be jealous, especially secretly. That's the worst kind. If someone writes something great, it's just more clarity in the world for all of us.
Natalie Goldberg
#69. I haven't written in a week. It's like holding your breath under water. You feel an awful constriction and then the instinct to propel yourself.
D.A. Botta
#70. Read widely, not in order to copy someone else's style, but to learn to appreciate and recognize good writing and to see how the best writers have achieved their result. Poor writing is, unfortunately, infectious and should be avoided.
P.D. James
#71. 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
#72. Your writing should be filled with simple complexities and complex simplicities. Because that is life.
Christy Hall
#73. I wrote a book. It sucked. I wrote nine more books. They sucked, too. Meanwhile, I read every single thing I could find on publishing and writing, went to conferences, joined professional organizations, hooked up with fellow writers in critique groups, and didn't give up. Then I wrote one more book.
Beth Revis
#74. Generally speaking, writers who have been at it for a while, and who are any good at it, suffer from an acute kind of self-knowledge. The unexamined life is not a risk for them.
Mark Slouka
#76. I know writers have to be crazy. But more than that that, they have to get made and stay mad. If things don't make a writer mad, he'll end up writing Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cottantail.
Leon Uris
#77. He has discovered the truths that keep writers chained to their desks: the primacy of the inner life and the sheer exhilaration of creating a world from scratch.
Barbara Klein Moss
#78. Think of Shakespeare and Melville and you think of thunder, lightning, wind. They all knew the joy of creating in large or small forms, on unlimited or restricted canvases. These are the children of the gods.
Ray Bradbury
#79. I do believe that characters in novels belong to their writers and their readers pretty equally. I've learned a lot of things about the characters I write from people who read about them. Readers expand them in ways I don't think of and take them to places I can't go.
Ann Brashares
#80. People do support themselves as artists and writers, so there's no need to be all doom and gloom about it. You just have to push forward. You have to follow your vision and hope for the best. You have to write for love.
Cheryl Strayed
#81. The good thing about being undiscovered is that every time you begin a new writing project it feels like this work will be the best one you have done, this one will be better than the last, a higher standard of writing, and that's the way it should be.
Robert Black
#82. The writing talent of Edinburgh is textured - we have poets, novelists, non-fiction writers, dramatists and more.
Sara Sheridan
#83. I don't like to make a distinction between the writer and the painter , finally , because I do both things anyway . Everybody's dreaming and trying to put down their dreams in the way that their hand knows best . I feel as much a unity , as much comradeship , with painters as I do writers .
Clive Barker
#84. Writers get ideas all day every day. The FedEx guy delivers a package from Sears and the writer is thinking how it could actually be a ticking time bomb.
Dan Alatorre
#85. So I think writers are made and not born. But what you choose to write is buried so deeply inside it's like lodestones inside you and sooner or later you come near something that you're supposed to be doing with your life and it's like a magnet. It attracts.
Stephen King
#86. Most people assume I write at night because of the kind of books I write, but I can shut out the light with my mind.
Carla H. Krueger
#87. Good horror offers a sense of an upended, lawless world and that's appealing to anyone who grew up feeling like an outsider.
Christopher Rice
#88. If you just sit there, and you're a writer, you're bound to write crap. A lot of American writing is crap. And a lot of American writers are professionals.
Jamaica Kincaid
#89. All writers start out mimicking other writers. I've never relinquished that. I have a good ear for speech and writing patterns.
Jesse Kellerman
#90. I really like Shakespeare a lot. The characters that he writes for females, I think, are really great and a lot more compelling than what modern writers write, which is weird because they didn't have actresses then.
Julia Stiles
#91. More and more I don't have any philosophy about writing, except that it is something we can do if God is good to us. Of course we are the ones who have to do the paperwork.
M.V. Carey
#92. I think fiction writers should work. If you have a job and are not living off advances or grants, you never have to make concessions in your writing, ever.
Hanya Yanagihara
#93. Most so-called writers keep writing and writing with the hope to, some day, find something to say.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
#94. Imagination is the real magic that exists in this world. Look inwards, to see outwards. And capture it in writing.
Fennel Hudson
#95. Writers are a savage breed, Mr. Strike. If you want life-long friendship and selfless camaraderie, join the army and learn to kill. If you want a lifetime of temporary alliances with peers who will glory in your every failure, write novels.
Robert Galbraith
#96. Writers who have the vision and the ability to produce real fiction do not produce unreal fiction.
Raymond Chandler
#97. Walter Scott has no business to write novels, especially good ones. - It is not fair. - He has fame and profit enough as a poet, and should not be taking the bread out of other people's mouths. - I do not like him, and do not mean to like Waverley if I can help it - but fear I must.
Jane Austen
#98. 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
#99. And you must not worry about me. You must follow your dreams. You have your life ahead of you. I am just a wanderer passing by.
Avijeet Das
#100. For the source of the short story is usually lyrical. And all writers speak from, and speak to, emotions eternally the same in all of us: love, pity, terror do not show favorites or leave any of us out.
Eudora Welty
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