Quotes about writers and writing

"A writer should be a joyous optimist. Anything that implies rejection of life is wrong for a writer."

Gribbon, George on writers and writing   

"I don't regard Brecht as a man of iron-gray purpose and intellect, I think he is a theatrical whore of the first quality."

Hall, Sir Peter on writers and writing   

"Whatever an author puts between the two covers of his book is public property; whatever of himself he does not put there is his private property, as much as if he had never written a word."

Hamilton, Gail on writers and writing   

"If a nation loses its storytellers, it loses its childhood."

Handke, Peter on writers and writing   

"The role of the writer is not simply to arrange Being according to his own lights; he must also serve as a medium to Being and remain open to its often unfathomable dictates. This is the only way the work can transcend its creator and radiate its meaning further than the author himself can see or perceive."

Havel, Vaclav on writers and writing   

"The characteristic of Chaucer is intensity: of Spencer, remoteness: of Milton elevation and of Shakespeare everything."

Hazlitt, William on writers and writing   

"They're fancy talkers about themselves, writers. If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don't listen to writers talking about writing or themselves."

Hellman, Lillian on writers and writing   

"If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don't listen to writers talking about writing or themselves."

Hellman, Lillian on writers and writing
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"Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer's loneliness, but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day."

Hemingway, Ernest on writers and writing
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"I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can."

Hemingway, Ernest on writers and writing
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"They can't yank a novelist like they can a pitcher. A novelist has to go the full nine, even if it kills him."

Hemingway, Ernest on writers and writing   

"A serious writer is not to be confounded with a solemn writer. A serious writer may be a hawk or a buzzard or even a popinjay, but a solemn writer is always a bloody owl."

Hemingway, Ernest on writers and writing   

"We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master."

Hemingway, Ernest on writers and writing   

"Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over."

Hemingway, Ernest on writers and writing   

"The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof, shit detector. This is the writer's radar and all great writers have had it."

Hemingway, Ernest on writers and writing
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"The writer must write what he has to say, not speak it."

Hemingway, Ernest on writers and writing   

"There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed."

Hemingway, Ernest on writers and writing
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"Manuscript: something submitted in haste and returned at leisure."

Herford, Oliver on writers and writing   

"The older author is constantly rediscovering himself in the more or less fossilized productions of his earlier years."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on writers and writing   

"You who write, choose a subject suited to your abilities and think long and hard on what your powers are equal to and what they are unable to perform."

Horace on writers and writing   

"You must often make erasures if you mean to write what is worthy of being read a second time; and don't labor for the admiration of the crowd, but be content with a few choice readers."

Horace on writers and writing   

"The secret of all good writing is sound judgment."

Horace on writers and writing   

"One gains universal applause who mingles the useful with the agreeable, at once delighting and instructing the reader."

Horace on writers and writing   

"Good sense is both the first principal and the parent source of good writing."

Horace on writers and writing   

"Let your literary compositions be kept from the public eye for nine years."

Horace on writers and writing
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"The strokes of the pen need deliberation as much as the sword needs swiftness."

Howe, Julia Ward on writers and writing   

"A writer and nothing else; a man alone in a room with the English language, trying to get human feelings right."

Hutchens, John K. on writers and writing   

"I am always at a loss at how much to believe of my own stories."

Irving, Washington on writers and writing
3 fans of this quote   

"He is outside of everything, and alien everywhere. He is an aesthetic solitary. His beautiful, light imagination is the wing that on the autumn evening just brushes the dusky window."

James, Henry on writers and writing   

"I hold any writer sufficiently justified who is himself in love with his theme."

James, Henry on writers and writing   

This quotation can be viewed in the context of a book

"Footnotes -- little dogs yapping at the heels of the text"

James, William on writers and writing   

"Composition is, for the most part, an effort of slow diligence and steady perseverance, to which the mind is dragged by necessity or resolution, and from which the attention is every moment starting to more delightful amusements."

Johnson, Samuel on writers and writing   

"I know not, Madam, that you have a right, upon moral principles, to make your readers suffer so much."

Johnson, Samuel on writers and writing   

"In all pointed sentences, some degree of accuracy must be sacrificed to conciseness."

Johnson, Samuel on writers and writing   

This quotation can be viewed in the context of a book

"The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading, in order to write; a man will turn over half a library to make one book."

Johnson, Samuel on writers and writing
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"Never write anything that does not give you great pleasure. Emotion is easily transferred from the writer to the reader."

Joubert, Joseph on writers and writing   

"No pen, no ink, no table, no room, no time, no quiet, no inclination."

Joyce, James on writers and writing   

"Writing is the incurable itch that possesses many."

Juvenal, (Decimus Junius Juvenalis) on writers and writing   

"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismograph."

Kesey, Ken on writers and writing
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"The moving finger writes, and having written moves on. Nor all thy piety nor all thy wit, can cancel half a line of it."

Khayyam, Omar on writers and writing