Quotes about writers and writing

"Style may defined as the proper words in the proper places."

Swift, Jonathan on writers and writing   

"As a man has no right to kill one of his children if it is diseased or insane, so a man who has made the gradual and conscious expression of his personality in literature the aim of his life, has no right to suppress himself any carefully considered work which seemed good enough when it was written. Suppression, if it is deserved, will come rapidly enough from the same causes that suppress the unworthy members of a man's family."

Synge, J. M. on writers and writing   

"The two most engaging powers of a good author are to make new things familiar and familiar things new."

Thackeray, William M. on writers and writing   

"A perfectly healthy sentence, it is true, is extremely rare. For the most part we miss the hue and fragrance of the thought; as if we could be satisfied with the dews of the morning or evening without their colors, or the heavens without their azure."

Thoreau, Henry David on writers and writing   

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"How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live."

Thoreau, Henry David on writers and writing   

"Some American writers who have known each other for years have never met in the daytime or when both were sober."

Thurber, James on writers and writing   

"When all things are equal, translucence in writing is more effective than transparency, just as glow is more revealing than glare."

Thurber, James on writers and writing   

"A writer is dear and necessary for us only in the measure of which he reveals to us the inner workings of his very soul."

Tolstoy, Count Leo on writers and writing
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"No doubt I shall go on writing, stumbling across tundras of unmeaning, planting words like bloody flags in my wake. Loose ends, things unrelated, shifts, nightmare journeys, cities arrived at and left, meetings, desertions, betrayals, all manner of unions, adulteries, triumphs, defeats... these are the facts."

Trocchi, Alexander on writers and writing   

"Most writers regard the truth as their most valuable possession, and therefore are economical in its use."

Twain, Mark on writers and writing
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"Write without pay until somebody offers to pay you. If nobody offers within three years, sawing wood is what you were intended for."

Twain, Mark on writers and writing   

"As to the adjective, when in doubt strike it out."

Twain, Mark on writers and writing   

"Often I think writing is a sheer paring away of oneself leaving always something thinner, barer, more meager."

Unknown, Source on writers and writing   

"My idea is always to reach my generation. The wise writer writes for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmasters of ever afterward."

Unknown, Source on writers and writing   

"An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmasters of ever afterwards."

Unknown, Source on writers and writing   

"All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath."

Unknown, Source on writers and writing   

"Mostly, we authors must repeat ourselves -- that's the truth. We have two or three great moving experiences in our lives -- experiences so great and moving that it doesn't seem at the time that anyone else has been so caught up and pounded and dazzled and astonished and beaten and broken and rescued and illuminated and rewarded and humbled in just that way ever before."

Unknown, Source on writers and writing   

"You don't write because you want to say something; you write because you've got something to say."

Unknown, Source on writers and writing
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"Writing is simple. First you have to make sure you have plenty of paper... sharp pencils... typewriter ribbon. Then put your belly up to your desk... roll a sheet of paper into the typewriter... and stare at it until beads of blood appear on your forehead."

Unknown, Source on writers and writing   

"Writers aren't people exactly. Or, if they're any good, they're a whole lot of people trying so hard to be one person. It's like actors, who try so pathetically not to look in mirrors. Who lean back ward trying -- only to see their faces in the reflecting chandeliers."

Unknown, Source on writers and writing   

"Many writers who choose to be active in the world lose not virtue but time, and that stillness without which literature cannot be made."

Vidal, Gore on writers and writing   

"Each writer is born with a repertory company in his head. Shakespeare has perhaps 20 players, and Tennessee Williams has about 5, and Samuel Beckett one -- and maybe a clone of that one. I have 10 or so, and that's a lot. As you get older, you become more skillful at casting them."

Vidal, Gore on writers and writing
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"Most bad books get that way because their authors are engaged in trying to justify themselves. If a vain author is an alcoholic, then the most sympathetically portrayed character in his book will be an alcoholic. This sort of thing is very boring for outsiders."

Vizinczey, Stephen on writers and writing   

"You can never correct your work well until you have forgotten it."

Voltaire on writers and writing
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"The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair."

Vorse, Mary Heaton on writers and writing   

"I love being a writer, what I can't stand is the paperwork."

Vries, Peter De on writers and writing
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"Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence."

Walker, Alice on writers and writing   

"Every drop of ink in my pen ran cold."

Walpole, Horace on writers and writing   

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"Once in seven years I burn all my sermons; for it is a shame if I cannot write better sermons now than I did seven years ago."

Wesley, John on writers and writing   

"Good writing is clear thinking made visible."

Wheeler, Bill on writers and writing   

"Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar."

White, Elwyn Brooks on writers and writing   

"In a sense the world dies every time a writer dies, because, if he is any good, he has been a wet nurse to humanity during his entire existence and has held earth close around him, like the little obstetrical toad that goes about with a cluster of eggs attached to his legs."

White, Elwyn Brooks on writers and writing   

"Writing is not like painting where you add. It is not what you put on the canvas that the reader sees. Writing is more like a sculpture where you remove, you eliminate in order to make the work visible. Even those pages you remove somehow remain."

Wiesel, Elie on writers and writing   

"This morning I took out a comma and this afternoon I put it back in again."

Wilde, Oscar on writers and writing
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"From the point of view of literature Mr. Kipling is a genius who drops his aspirates. From the point of view of life, he is a reporter who knows vulgarity better than any one has ever known it."

Wilde, Oscar on writers and writing   

"His style is chaos illumined by flashes of lightning. As a writer he has mastered everything except language."

Wilde, Oscar on writers and writing   

"The future author is one who discovers that language, the exploration and manipulation of the resources of language, will serve him in winning through to his way."

Wilder, Thornton on writers and writing   

"A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction."

Woolf, Virginia on writers and writing   

"Every secret of a writer's soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written large in his works."

Woolf, Virginia on writers and writing   

"I was in a queer mood, thinking myself very old: but now I am a woman again -- as I always am when I write."

Woolf, Virginia on writers and writing