“Everybody can write; writers can't do anything else.”

—  Mignon McLaughlin

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Everybody can write; writers can't do anything else." by Mignon McLaughlin?
Mignon McLaughlin photo
Mignon McLaughlin 278
American journalist 1913–1983

Related quotes

Eudora Welty photo

“Every writer, like everybody else, thinks he's living through the crisis of the ages. To write honestly and with all our powers is the least we can do, and the most.”

Eudora Welty (1909–2001) American author

On Writing (2002)

William Saroyan photo

“If you can't write a decent short story because of the cold, write something else. Write anything.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze (1934), A Cold Day
Context: If you can't write a decent short story because of the cold, write something else. Write anything. Write a long letter to somebody.

“A writer will do anything to avoid the act of writing.”

William Zinsser (1922–2015) writer, editor, journalist, literary critic, professor

Source: On Writing Well (Fifth Edition, orig. pub. 1976), Chapter 4, Style, p. 21.

Julia Quinn photo

“Happy endings are all I can do. I wouldn't know how to write anything else.”

Julia Quinn (1970) American novelist

Source: Romancing Mister Bridgerton

E. W. Howe photo

“When you can't do anything else to a boy, you can make him wash his face.”

E. W. Howe (1853–1937) Novelist, magazine and newspaper editor

Travel Letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913), p120.

Gertrude Stein photo

“I am writing for myself and strangers. This is the only way that I can do it. Everybody is a real one to me, everybody is like some one else too to me. No one of them that I know can want to know it and so I write for myself and strangers.”

Gertrude Stein book The Making of Americans

The Making of Americans (1925)

Henry Miller photo

“I soon learned that one must give up everything and not do anything else but write, that one must write write write.”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

Henry Miller on Writing (1964)

Charles Dudley Warner photo

“A well known American writer said once that, while everybody talked about the weather, nobody seemed to do anything about it.”

Charles Dudley Warner (1829–1900) American writer

Editorial, Hartford Courant (27 August 1897); this remark was reportedly quoted by Mark Twain and it has become often attributed to him, but the context of the statement might indicate the contrary situation
Paraphrased variant: Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.
Variant: Everybody complains about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.

Gloria Estefan photo

“I'm a writer and this is what I love to do. There's no reason that just because you're a celebrity, you can't write.”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

Reuters News Agency (October 10, 2005)
2007, 2008

Related topics