Top 100 Writers Write Quotes
#1. 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
#2. Writers write these male stereotypes, and it makes it ten times more interesting if a woman says the lines.
Sigourney Weaver
#3. Here's the bottom line; writers write. Sometimes words flow easily. Sometimes it's like sloughing through mud. Either way a professional writer keeps writing.
P.C. Cast
#4. Your writers write these pieces about meaningless startups, meaningless apps and meaningless companies.
Nick Denton
#5. Writers write, everyone else just talks about writing.
Various
#6. You say you're a writer but you're depressed. Not an excuse; write from there. Write some depressing sh*t. Believe me. You will have plenty of readers who can relate. Remember writers write.
Stanley Christopher
#7. I think the press does, too; it's just the few crazies and paparazzi that give them a bad name. Real writers write good things. My daughter's a writer, and she's a quality writer.
Debbie Reynolds
#8. It's true that we, writers, write (create) books, but eventually, a good book gives birth to a good, established writer.
Tarang Sinha
#9. I think fiction writers write what they do because no one else has written it and they want to read it.
Alan Cheuse
#10. Some writers write about love; some writers write with love.
Debasish Mridha
#11. Now, practically even better news than that of short assignments is the idea of shitty first drafts. All good writers write them.
Anne Lamott
#12. It is a great paradox and a great injustice that writers write because we fear death and want to leave something indestructible in our wake and, at the same time, are drawn to all the things that kill: whiskey and cigarettes, unprotected sex, and deep-fried burritos.
Ariel Gore
#13. My teacher Tom Spanbauer, the man who got me started writing in his workshop, used to say: 'Writers write because they weren't invited to a party.' That always struck so true, and people always nod their heads when they hear that. Especially writers.
Chuck Palahniuk
#14. Writers write. That's all it is. It is as simple, and as complex, as that.
Stephen King
#15. The reality is, what writers write and the way they live can be as different as a lump of coal and a diamond. The written life is shined to a deceptive gloss.
Donald Miller
#16. Good traders trade. Good letter writers write letters.
Ed Seykota
#19. Writers write for one reason: to create an emotion in the reader, to reach across and make them feel something. You want a reaction. Yeah, it's nicer when the reaction is to throw flowers than it is to throw brickbats, but you have to accept both equally.
J. Michael Straczynski
#20. Writers write about what obsesses them. You draw those cards. I lost my mother when I was 14. My daughter died at the age of 6. I lost my faith as a Catholic. When I'm writing, the darkness is always there. I go where the pain is.
Anne Rice
#21. That's why writers write - to say things loudly with ink. To give feet to thoughts; to make quiet, still feelings loudly heard.
Tarryn Fisher
#23. I want to be clear about this. If you wrote from experience, you'd get maybe one book, maybe three poems. Writers write from empathy.
Nikki Giovanni
#24. Most of what writers write about their work is ill-informed bullshit.
Stephen King
#26. Readers read more into books than writers write into them.
Melvyn Small
#27. Isn't that why all writers write? To inspire their readers?
Adam Langer
#28. Advice to beginning SF writers? Write a lot, finish what you write, and when it's done, keep sending it out for quite awhile.
Rudy Rucker
#29. 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
#30. The only way to write is to write. Writers write. And when they've written, they write some more.
Jasper Fforde
#31. An awful lot of thriller writers write women rather badly. So just doing it OK gets a lot of credit.
Ken Follett
#32. I am as interested in seeing what happens to my characters as any reader; that is why I tell kids that writers write for the same reason readers read - to find out the end of the story.
Ann Turner
#33. All writers write about the past, and I try to make it come alive so you can see what happened.
Ernest Gaines
#34. Anna is the sort of woman who writers write about, Tom. Somewhere in the third act, women like her save characters like you and me from ourselves. She's the loveliest literary device in the world.
Matthew Norman
#35. Real writers write because they love to write. They don't write for public acclaim.
Chuck Palahniuk
#36. I think all writers write from the time they're really young, and you just start asking the question, 'What if?'
K.A. Applegate
#37. Not that many people, even contemporary writers, write about right now.
Anna Deavere Smith
#39. Why do writers write? Why do actors act? Why do painters paint? It doesn't pay much, unless you're very successful. It's who we are.
Lori Lesko
#40. Ninety-five percent of all writers who write do not get published, but 100 percent of all writers write because they have a voice in their head. The vast majority of writers simply write because they have to.
Steve Berry
#41. I believe there's a common ground in what all gifted writers write. It has to do with their wish to turn darkness into light.
Mandy Patinkin
#42. Writers write for fame, wealth, power and the love of women.
Sigmund Freud
#43. Why writers write I do not know. As well ask why a hen lays an egg or why a cow stands patiently while an underprivileged farmer burglarizes her.
H.L. Mencken
#45. Writers write while dreamers procastinate.
Besa Kosova
#46. There are all kinds of writers. The best writers write children's books.
Richard Scarry
#47. Other people get into occupations by accident or design; but writers are born. I could work at selling motels, or slopping hogs, for fifty years, but if someone asked my occupation, I'd say writer, even if I'd never sold a word. Writers write. Other people talk.
W.P. Kinsella
#48. People say that writers write for money. From my own experience that's not true. I write for me. I publish for money.
Greg Curtis
#49. I started out life as a writer, and writers write in part because they don't want to talk.
Gloria Steinem
#51. It's not really about confidence. It's just something that isn't really in the vocabulary of what goes on at work. The writers write and the actors act.
Simon Helberg
#52. Most writers write haphazardly. The actor is fighting unjustified words all the time.
Marlon Brando
#53. I think what I wanted to do was meet someone who knew more than me about songwriting structure and progressions and middle eights and things that more traditional writers write and I don't usually employ.
Bat For Lashes
#54. Writers write to influence their readers, their preachers, their auditors, but always, at bottom, to be more themselves.
Aldous Huxley
#55. I think all writers write for an audience. There is no such thing as writing for yourself.
William S. Burroughs
#56. That 'writers write' is meant to be self-evident. People like to say it. I find it is hardly ever true. Writers drink. Writers rant. Writers phone. Writers sleep. I have met very few writers who write at all.
Renata Adler
#57. Most writers write to say something about other people - and it doesn't last. Good writers write to find out about themselves - and it lasts forever.
Gloria Steinem
#58. I had to educate him that there was no such thing as writer's block, that writers write when they write, and when they don't, they don't.
Anthony Kiedis
#59. Sometimes I think they are writers who do not write. That "writers write" is meant to be self-evident. People like to say it. I find it is hardly ever true. Writers drink. Writers rant. Writers phone. Writers sleep. I have met very few writers that write at all.
Renata Adler
#60. Serious writers write, inspired or not. Over time they discover that routine is a better friend than inspiration.
Ralph Keyes
#61. Writers write for the same reason readers read. We want to know how it ends, too.
Robynn Tolbert
#62. I think writers write for their consciences, they write for their own true audiences, for their souls.
Mo Yan
#63. I know some children's writers write for specific children, or for the children they once were, but I never have. I just thought children might like my sort of visual humour.
Quentin Blake
#65. Basically, writers write because they have something to say...Everyone has a story in them, writers merely decide to share it with the world...
Virginia Alison
#66. My theory is that sometimes writers write books because they want to read them, and they aren't there to be read. And I think that was true of me.
Alan Furst
#67. Many fiction writers write for the critics or for themselves; they forget the common reader. I never do. I don't think journalism clashes with my fiction; on the contrary, it helps enormously.
Isabel Allende
#68. One of the things that put me off writing for a while was that piece of advice everybody gives new writers: 'Write what you know.' Nobody would ever want to read about my boring life! But I do know a lot of things about different societies' cultures and mythologies. The way people were and are.
Carol Berg
#69. Most writers write books that they wouldn't read. I ought to know; I've done it myself.
Gore Vidal
#70. It's nice to have writers write nice things about you and guys on radio and TV say nice things about you, but the guy who's in the locker next to you is the one you play the game for.
Joe Torre
#72. Most writers write too much. I have the exact opposite problem. I feel I could write almost anything in a paragraph. I have a natural ability to condense, and so I often think, "Are you kidding me? Five thousand words? How am I gonna make 5,000 words out of that?"
Fran Lebowitz
#73. Here in New York, we're media obsessed. Writers write about writers who write about writers and reporters and freelancers, and it's just a festival of information. We're all analyzing and examining and predicting, and I can't imagine that it's like that everywhere else.
Lauren Weisberger
#74. I'm an author. And writers write books. And writing books is a full-time career.
Marianne Williamson
#75. Let me tell you one thing about why writers write: had I known the answer to any of these questions I would never have needed to write a novel
Joan Didion
#76. As a general rule, highly rational writers (like Nabokov) write most comfortably in the morning, and mainly intuitive writers write most comfortably at night.
John Gardner
#78. Writers divide into those who write biting their nails and those who don't. Some writers write licking their finger.
Italo Calvino
#80. 'American Playhouse' is very supportive of writers. That's really why writers like to write for 'American Playhouse' for very little money. They care about making your play, your script, not some network production. We're treated like playwrights, not like fodder for some machine.
Terrence McNally
#81. Nobody thinks mystery writers go around killing people, but they always seem to assume singers are singing about themselves, especially if you write melancholy songs like me.
Del Shannon
#82. You can curse the darkness, or you can dispel it.
A.D. Posey
#83. Black writers, of whatever quality, who step outside the pale of what black writers are supposed to write about, or who black writers are supposed to be, are condemned to silences in black literary circles that are as total and as destructive as any imposed by racism.
Audre Lorde
#85. Accept nothing. Challenge everything.
A.D. Posey
#86. [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
#88. Your writing should be filled with simple complexities and complex simplicities. Because that is life.
Christy Hall
#89. I have an ambition to write a great book, but that's really a competition with myself. I've noticed that a lot of young writers, people in all media, want to be famous but they don't really want to do anything. I can't think of anything less worth striving for than fame.
Zadie Smith
#90. Everyone thinks writers must know more about the inside of the human head, but that's wrong. They know less, that's why they write. Trying to find out what everyone else takes for granted.
Margaret Atwood
#91. I write whenever it suits me. During a creative period I write every day; a novel should not be interrupted.
Francois Mauriac
#92. I write because that is what I am supposed to do.
Christy Hall
#93. It's not unusual for writers to look backward. Because that's your pool of resources. If you were to write something now, I bet there's a pretty good chance you'd call on your teenage years, your experiences then, stuff you learned then.
Paul McCartney
#94. I have experienced healing through other writers' poetry, but there's no way I can sit down to write in the hope a poem will have healing potential. If I do, I'll write a bad poem.
Marilyn Hacker
#95. One of the surprising things I hadn't expected when I decided to write crime fiction is how much you are expected to be out in front of the public. Some writers aren't comfortable with that. I don't have a problem with that.
Kathy Reichs
#98. You will find the greatest happiness in letting yourself be.
A.D. Posey
#99. 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
