"There are few cases in which mere popularity should be considered a proper test of merit; but the case of song-writing is, I think, one of the few."

Poe, Edgar Allan on song and singing   

"No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem."

Washington, Booker T. on pride   

"There is a great discovery still to be made in literature, that of paying literary men by the quantity they do not write."

Carlyle, Thomas on literature   

"The reason a writer writes a book is to forget a book and the reason a reader reads one is to remember it."

Wolfe, Thomas on books - reading
8 fans of this quote   

"Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins committed in previous lives. The English reading public explains the reason why."

Joyce, James on language   

"A bad book is as much of a labor to write as a good one; it comes as sincerely from the author's soul."

Huxley, Aldous on books - reading   

"Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings so that you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for."

Socrates on writers and writing   

"All those writers who write about their childhood! Gentle God, if I wrote about mine you wouldn't sit in the same room with me."

Parker, Dorothy on autobiography   

"It is healthier, in any case, to write for the adults one's children will become than for the children one's mature critics often are."

Walker, Alice on criticism   

"Even those who write against fame wish for the fame of having written well, and those who read their works desire the fame of having read them."

Pascal, Blaise on fame   

"The only sensible ends of literature are, first, the pleasurable toil of writing; second, the gratification of one's family and friends; and lastly, the solid cash."

Hawthorne, Nathaniel on literature   

"A publisher is a specialized form of bank or building society, catering for customers who cannot cope with life and are therefore forced to write about it."

Haycraft, Colin on publishing and publishers   

"To write well, express yourself like common people, but think like a wise man. Or, think as wise men do, but speak as the common people do."

Aristotle on writers and writing
17 fans of this quote   

"I can write good songs. I can sing 'em, and I mean it, I mean it deeply, and I pour everything into that. Other than that, I suck."

Duritz, Adam on greatness   

"To try to write love is to confront the muck of language: that region of hysteria where language is both too much and too little, excessive and impoverished."

Barthes, Roland on love
14 fans of this quote   

"It is a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his art than he can by practicing it."

Auden, W. H. on poetry and poets
3 fans of this quote   

"Evidently there are plenty of people in journalism who have neither got what they liked nor quite grown to like what they get. They write pieces they do not much enjoy writing, for papers they totally despise, and the sad process ends by ruining their style and disintegrating their personality, two developments which in a writer cannot be separate, since his personality and style must progress or deteriorate together, like a married couple in a country where death is the only permissible divorce."

Cockburn, Claud on journalism and journalists   

"It seems that the fiction writer has a revolting attachment to the poor, for even when he writes about the rich, he is more concerned with what they lack than with what they have."

O'Connor, Flannery on fiction   

"Of all the ways of acquiring books, writing them oneself is regarded as the most praiseworthy method. Writers are really people who write books not because they are poor, but because they are dissatisfied with the books which they could buy but do not like."

Benjamin, Walter on books - reading
6 fans of this quote   

"The trouble with writing a book about yourself is that you can't fool around. If you write about someone else, you can stretch the truth from here to Finland. If you write about yourself the slightest deviation makes you realize instantly that there may be honor among thieves, but you are just a dirty liar."

Marx, Groucho on autobiography   

"Writing a book of poetry is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo."

Marquis, Don on poetry and poets   

"The satirist who writes nothing but satire should write but little -- or it will seem that his satire springs rather from his own caustic nature than from the sins of the world in which he lives."

Trollope, Anthony on sarcasm   

"A petty reason perhaps why novelists more and more try to keep a distance from journalists is that novelists are trying to write the truth and journalists are trying to write fiction."

Greene, Graham on journalism and journalists
3 fans of this quote   

"In Hollywood the woods are full of people that learned to write, but evidently can't read. If they could read their stuff, they'd stop writing."

Rogers, Will on movies   

"The life of every person is like a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another."

Barrie, Sir James M. on life
18 fans of this quote   

"Those who write clearly have readers, those who write obscurely have commentators."

Lincoln, Abraham on ambiguity
9 fans of this quote   

"Every man with a bellyful of the classics is an enemy to the human race."

Miller, Henry on books - classics
3 fans of this quote   

"The chief enemy of creativity is good taste."

Picasso, Pablo on creativity
5 fans of this quote   

"Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats."

Aiken, Howard on ideas   

"Writers, you know, are the beggars of Western society."

Paz, Octavio on writers and writing   

"Most authors steal their works, or buy."

Pope, Alexander on writers and writing   

"True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, as those move easiest who have learned to dance. 'Tis not enough no harshness gives offence. The sound must seem an echo to the sense."

Pope, Alexander on writers and writing   

"Nothing written for pay is worth printing. Only what has been written against the market."

Pound, Ezra on writers and writing   

"What no wife of a writer can ever understand is that a writer is working when he's staring out of the window."

Rascoe, Burton on writers and writing   

"To write something, you have to risk making a fool of yourself."

Rice, Anne on writers and writing   

"Fundamentally, all writing is about the same thing; it's about dying, about the brief flicker of time we have here, and the frustration that it creates."

Richler, Mordecai on writers and writing   

"A writer writes not because he is educated but because he is driven by the need to communicate. Behind the need to communicate is the need to share. Behind the need to share is the need to be understood. The writer wants to be understood much more than he wants to be respected or praised or even loved. And that perhaps, is what makes him different from others."

Rosten, Leo on writers and writing
3 fans of this quote   

"Every writer is a narcissist. This does not mean that he is vain; it only means that he is hopelessly self-absorbed."

Rosten, Leo on writers and writing   

"The only reason for being a professional writer is that you can't help it."

Rosten, Leo on writers and writing   

"If you're going to write, don't pretend to write down. It's going to be the best you can do, and it's the fact that it's the best you can do that kills you."

Parker, Dorothy on writers and writing