Quotes about writers and writing

"Writing is the hardest way of earning a living, with the possible exception of wrestling alligators."

Miller, Olin on writers and writing   

"Let those who would write heroic poems make their life an heroic poem."

Milton, John on writers and writing   

"I always write a good first line, but I have trouble in writing the others."

Moliere on writers and writing
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"All the world knows me in my book, and my book in me."

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De on writers and writing   

"Like stones, words are laborious and unforgiving, and the fitting of them together, like the fitting of stones, demands great patience and strength of purpose and particular skill."

Morrison, Edmund on writers and writing
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"Of course I'm a black writer. I'm not just a black writer, but categories like black writer, woman writer and Latin American writer aren't marginal anymore. We have to acknowledge that the thing we call literature is more pluralistic now, just as society ought to be. The melting pot never worked. We ought to be able to accept on equal terms everybody from the Hasidim to Walter Lippmann, from the Rastafarians to Ralph Bunche."

Morrison, Toni on writers and writing   

"The shelf life of the modern hardback writer is somewhere between the milk and the yogurt."

Mortimer, John on writers and writing   

"Writing is like getting married. One should never commit oneself until one is amazed at one's luck."

Murdoch, Iris on writers and writing   

"Style and Structure are the essence of a book; great ideas are hogwash."

Nabokov, Vladimir on writers and writing   

"I'm the kind of writer that people think other people are reading."

Naipaul, V. S. on writers and writing   

"The only way out is the way through, just as you cannot escape from death except by dying. Being unable to write, you must examine in writing this being unable, which becomes for the present -- henceforth? -- the subject to which you are condemned."

Nemerov, Howard on writers and writing   

"To be a good diarist, one must have a snouty, sneaky mind."

Nicolson, Harold on writers and writing   

"Of all that is written, I love only what a person has written with his own blood."

Nietzsche, Friedrich on writers and writing
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"A writer is a person who has solutions for which there are no riddles."

Nunn, Gregory on writers and writing   

"Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them."

O'Connor, Flannery on writers and writing   

"Good novels are not written by orthodoxy-sniffers, nor by people who are conscience-stricken about their own orthodoxy. Good novels are written by people who are not frightened."

Orwell, George on writers and writing   

"All writers are vain, selfish and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives lies a mystery. Writing a book is a long, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand."

Orwell, George on writers and writing
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"For a creative writer possession of the truth is less important than emotional sincerity."

Orwell, George on writers and writing
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"He is a man of thirty-five, but looks fifty. He is bald, has varicose veins and wears spectacles, or would wear them if his only pair were not chronically lost. If things are normal with him, he will be suffering from malnutrition, but if he has recently had a lucky streak, he will be suffering from a hangover. At present it is half past eleven in the morning, and according to his schedule he should have started work two hours ago; but even if he had made any serious effort to start he would have been frustrated by the almost continuous ringing of the telephone bell, the yells of the baby, the rattle of an electric drill out in the street, and the heavy boots of his creditors clumping up the stairs. The most recent interruption was the arrival of the second post, which brought him two circulars and an income tax demand printed in red. Needless to say this person is a writer."

Orwell, George on writers and writing   

"One reason writers write is out of revenge. Life hurts; certain ideas and experiences hurt; one wants to clarify, to set out illuminations, to replay the old bad scenes and get the Treppenworte said -- the words one didn't have the strength or ripeness to say when those words were necessary for one's dignity or survival."

Ozick, Cynthia 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   

"If I had more time I would write a shorter letter."

Pascal, Blaise on writers and writing
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"The last thing we decide in writing a book is what to put first."

Pascal, Blaise on writers and writing   

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

Paz, Octavio on writers and writing   

"Good writing excites me, and makes life worth living."

Pinter, Harold on writers and writing   

"I would love to spend all my time writing to you; I'd love to share with you all that goes through my mind, all that weighs on my heart, all that gives air to my soul; phantoms of art, dreams that would be so beautiful if they could come true."

Pirandello, Luigi on writers and writing
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"Most authors steal their works, or buy."

Pope, Alexander on writers and writing   

"Ten censure wrong, for one that writes amiss."

Pope, Alexander on writers and writing   

"Why did I write? What sin to me unknown dipped me in ink, my parents , or my own?"

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   

"Good authors, too, who once knew better words now only use four-letter words writing prose... anything goes."

Porter, Cole on writers and writing   

"Good writers are those who keep the language efficient. That is to say, keep it accurate, keep it clear."

Pound, Ezra 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   

"I perceived that to express those impressions, to write that essential book, which is the only true one, a great writer does not, in the current meaning of the word, invent it, but, since it exists already in each one of us, interprets it. The duty and the task of a writer are those of an interpreter."

Proust, Marcel on writers and writing   

"Great writers arrive among us like new diseases -- threatening, powerful, impatient for patients to pick up their virus, irresistible."

Raine, Craig 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   

"Really, in the end, the only thing that can make you a writer is the person that you are, the intensity of your feeling, the honesty of your vision, the unsentimental acknowledgment of the endless interest of the life around and within you. Virtually nobody can help you deliberately-many people will help you unintentionally."

Rau, Santha Rama on writers and writing   

"Make em laugh; make em cry; make em wait."

Reade, Charles on writers and writing   

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"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