Quotes about writers and writing

"People want to know why I do this, why I write such gross stuff. I like to tell them that I have the heart of a small boy -- and I keep it in a jar on my desk."

King, Stephen on writers and writing
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"I believe that it is my job not only to write books but to have them published. A book is like a child. You have to defend the life of a child."

Konrad, George on writers and writing   

"This is something that I cannot get over -- that a whole line could be written by half a man, that a work could be built on the quicksand of a character."

Kraus, Karl on writers and writing   

"A writer is someone who can make a riddle out of an answer."

Kraus, Karl on writers and writing   

"It requires more than mere genius to be an author."

La Bruyere, Jean De on writers and writing   

"The writing of the wise are the only riches our posterity cannot squander."

Landor, Walter Savage on writers and writing   

"I hate the actor and audience business. An author should be in among the crowd, kicking their shins or cheering them on to some mischief or merriment."

Lawrence, D. H. on writers and writing   

"I like to write when I feel spiteful. It is like having a good sneeze."

Lawrence, D. H. on writers and writing   

"It's hard enough to write a good drama, it's much harder to write a good comedy, and it's hardest of all to write a drama with comedy. Which is what life is."

Lemmon, Jack on writers and writing
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"The cure for writers cramp is writer's block."

Leon, Inigo de on writers and writing   

"The only phenomenon with which writing has always been concomitant is the creation of cities and empires, that is the integration of large numbers of individuals into a political system, and their grading into castes or classes. It seems to have favored the exploitation of human beings rather than their enlightenment."

Levi-Strauss, Claude on writers and writing   

"We do not write in order to be understood; we write in order to understand."

Lewis, Cecil Day on writers and writing
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"As I take up my pen I feel myself so full, so equal to my subject, and see my book so clearly before me in embryo, I would almost like to try to say it all in a single word."

Lichtenberg, Georg C. on writers and writing   

"Nowadays three witty turns of phrase and a lie make a writer."

Lichtenberg, Georg C. on writers and writing   

"I can write better than anybody who can write faster, and I can write faster than anybody who can write better."

Liebling, A. J. on writers and writing   

"I think it's bad to talk about one's present work, for it spoils something at the root of the creative act. It discharges the tension."

Mailer, Norman on writers and writing   

"Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing."

Mailer, Norman on writers and writing
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"The writer's language is to some degree the product of his own action; he is both the historian and the agent of his own language."

Man, Paul De on writers and writing   

"The ambivalence of writing is such that it can be considered both an act and an interpretive process that follows after an act with which it cannot coincide. As such, it both affirms and denies its own nature."

Man, Paul De on writers and writing   

"Ultimately, literature is nothing but carpentry. With both you are working with reality, a material just as hard as wood."

Marquez, Gabriel Garcia on writers and writing
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"I never think when I write. Nobody can do two things at the same time and do them well."

Marquis, Don on writers and writing   

"If written directions alone would suffice, libraries wouldn't need to have the rest of the universities attached."

Martin, Judith on writers and writing   

"Practically everybody in New York has half a mind to write a book, and does."

Marx, Groucho on writers and writing
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"The writer may very well serve a movement of history as its mouthpiece, but he cannot of course create it."

Marx, Karl on writers and writing   

"It's very hard to be a gentleman and a writer."

Maugham, W. Somerset on writers and writing   

"The trouble with young writers is that they are all in their sixties."

Maugham, W. Somerset on writers and writing   

"The writer is more concerned to know than to judge."

Maugham, W. Somerset on writers and writing   

"There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately no one knows what they are."

Maugham, W. Somerset on writers and writing   

"Habits in writing as in life are only useful if they are broken as soon as they cease to be advantageous."

Maugham, W. Somerset on writers and writing   

"The need to express oneself in writing springs from a mal-adjustment to life, or from an inner conflict which the adolescent (or the grown man) cannot resolve in action. Those to whom action comes as easily as breathing rarely feel the need to break loose from the real, to rise above, and describe it... I do not mean that it is enough to be maladjusted to become a great writer, but writing is, for some, a method of resolving a conflict, provided they have the necessary talent."

Maurois, Andre on writers and writing
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"You enter a state of controlled passivity, you relax your grip and accept that even if your declared intention is to justify the ways of God to man, you might end up interesting your readers rather more in Satan."

Mcewan, Ian on writers and writing   

"You expect far too much of a first sentence. Think of it as analogous to a good country breakfast: what we want is something simple, but nourishing to the imagination. Hold the philosophy, hold the adjectives, just give us a plain subject and verb and perhaps a wholesome, nonfattening adverb or two."

Mcmurtry, Larry on writers and writing   

"Give me a condor's quill! Give me Vesuvius crater for an inkstand!"

Melville, Herman on writers and writing   

"I write in order to attain that feeling of tension relieved and function achieved which a cow enjoys on giving milk."

Mencken, H. L. on writers and writing
3 fans of this quote   

"Writing crystallizes thought and thought produces action."

Meyer, Paul J. on writers and writing   

"I was brought up in the great tradition of the late nineteenth century: that a writer never complains, never explains and never disdains."

Michener, James A. on writers and writing   

"I am always interested in why young people become writers, and from talking with many I have concluded that most do not want to be writers working eight and ten hours a day and accomplishing little; they want to have been writers, garnering the rewards of having completed a best-seller. They aspire to the rewards of writing but not to the travail."

Michener, James A. on writers and writing   

" Although most of us know Vincent van Gogh in Arles and Paul Gauguin in Tahiti as if they were neighbors -- somewhat disreputable but endlessly fascinating -- none of us can name two French generals or department store owners of that period. I take enormous pride in considering myself an artist, one of the necessaries."

Michener, James A. on writers and writing   

"After all, most writing is done away from the typewriter, away from the desk. I'd say it occurs in the quiet, silent moments, while you're walking or shaving or playing a game, or whatever, or even talking to someone you're not vitally interested in."

Miller, Henry on writers and writing   

"A man writes to throw off the poison which he has accumulated because of his false way of life. He is trying to recapture his innocence, yet all he succeeds in doing (by writing) is to inoculate the world with a virus of his disillusionment. No man would set a word down on paper if he had the courage to live out what he believed in."

Miller, Henry on writers and writing