Quotes about writer

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“The true writer, the born writer, will scribble words on scraps of litter, the back of a bus tickets, on the wall of a cell.”

David Nicholls book One Day

“Prison always has been a good place for writers, killing, as it does, the twin demons of mobility and diversion”

Dan Simmons book Hyperion

“I don't want to be a writer so I can write about my life. I want to be a writer to escape from it.

+ Then you shouldn't be a writer.”

Candace Bushnell book The Carrie Diaries

“Really, becoming a writer sounds more like a mental illness than a professional choice.”

Shannon Hale (1974) American fantasy novelist

“All writers start with a layer of truth, don't they? If not, their stories would be nothing but spools of cotton candy, a fleeting taste wrapped around nothing but air.”

Jodi Picoult book The Storyteller

“… All artists’ work is autobiographical. Any writer’s work is a map of their psyche. You can really see what their concerns are, what their obsessions are, and what interests them.”

Kim Addonizio (1954) Poet, novelist

“If you don't believe what I'm telling you, then ask yourself this: would any decent, kind-hearted individual become a writer? Of course not.”

Brandon Sanderson Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians

“A writer takes earnest measures to secure his solitude and then finds endless ways to squander it.”

Don DeLillo (1936) American novelist, playwright and essayist

“A writer needs four things to achieve greatness, Pasquale: desire, disappointment, and the sea.”
“That’s only three.”
Alvis finished his wine. “You have to do disappointment twice.”

Jess Walter book Beautiful Ruins

“Nothing bad can happen to a writer. Everything is material.”

Philip Roth (1933–2018) American novelist

“Above all things -- read. Read the great stylists who cannot be copied rather than the successful writers who must not be copied.”

Ngaio Marsh (1895–1982) New Zealand writer

“To read a writer is for me not merely to get an idea of what he says, but to go off with him and travel in his company.”

André Gide (1869–1951) French novelist and essayist

“An original writer is not one who imitates nobody, but one whom nobody can imitate.”

François-René de Chateaubriand (1768–1848) French writer, politician, diplomat and historian

“What I adore is supreme professionalism. I’m bored by writers who can write only when it’s raining.”

Noel Coward (1899–1973) English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer

“The writer must be universal in sympathy and an outcast by nature: only then can he see clearly.”

Julian Barnes book Flaubert's Parrot

“A writer needs a pen, an artist needs a brush, but a filmmaker needs an army.”

Orson Welles (1915–1985) American actor, director, writer and producer

“I want to be an honest man and a good writer.”

James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States

“I really believe that if I were not a writer, not a creator, not an experimenter, I might have been a very faithful wife.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

“Every writer I know has trouble writing.”

Joseph Heller (1923–1999) American author

“A real writer learns from earlier writers the way a boy learns from an apple orchard -- by stealing what he has a taste for, and can carry off”

Archibald Macleish (1892–1982) American poet and Librarian of Congress

“When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.”

Ernest Hemingway book Death in the Afternoon

“The job of the writer is to take a close and uncomfortable look at the world they inhabit, the world we all inhabit, and the job of the novel is to make the corpse stink.”

Walter Mosley (1952) American writer

“Writers are not just people who sit down and write. They hazard themselves. Every time you compose a book your composition of yourself is at stake.”

E.L. Doctorow (1931–2015) novelist, editor, professor

“The creative writer does the same as the child at play; he creates a world of fantasy which he takes very seriously.”

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian neurologist known as the founding father of psychoanalysis

“Those who write are writers. Those who wait are waiters.”

A. Lee Martinez (1973) Author

“Normally writers do not talk much, because they are saving their conversations for the readers of their book-
those invisible listeners with whom we wish to strike a sympathetic chord.”

Ruskin Bond (1934) British Indian writer

“Cure for writer's block: blow something up(in the story)”

Scott Westerfeld (1963) American science fiction writer

“When people read his books they have an uncontrollable desire to hang the author in the town square. I can’t think of a higher honor for a writer.”

Roberto Bolaño (1953–2003) Chilean author

“The only reason for being a professional writer is that you can't help it.”

Leo Rosten (1908–1997) American writer

“Writers are the exorcists of their own demons.”

Mario Vargas Llosa (1936) Peruvian writer, politician, journalist, and essayist

“I didn’t know that painters and writers retired. They’re like soldiers – they just fade away.”

Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1919) American artist, writer and activist

“The writer must be four people: 1) The nut, the obsede 2) The moron 3) The stylist 4) The critic. 1 supplies the material; 2 lets it come out; 3 is taste; 4 is intelligence.”

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist

“She is not a writer at all, really; she is merely a gifted eccentric.”

Michael Cunningham book The Hours

“Writers have to keep on writing if they want to mature, like caterpillars endlessly chewing on leaves.”

Haruki Murakami (1949) Japanese author, novelist

“All I do know, for certain, after 53 years in this business, is that writers who sincerely think that their language can represent reality ought to be plumbers.”

Gilbert Sorrentino (1929–2006) American writer

“I think writers are the most narcissistic people. Well, I musn't say this, I like many of them, a great many of my friends are writers.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

“There is no way that writers can be tamed and rendered civilized. Or even cured.”

Robert A. Heinlein book The Cat Who Walks Through Walls

“Because this business of becoming conscious, of being a writer, is ultimately about asking yourself, How alive am I willing to be?”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

“It's easy, after all, not to be a writer. Most people aren't writers, and very little harm comes to them.”

Julian Barnes book Flaubert's Parrot

“Youcrazy!" whispered Meggie. "You're a total lunatic!"

But her opinion did not impress Fenoglio in the slightest. "So what? All writers are lunatics!”

Cornelia Funke Inkheart trilogy

“Who here wants to be a writer?' I asked. Everyone in the room raised his hand. 'Why the hell aren't you home writing?' I said, and left the stage.”

Leon Uris (1924–2003) American novelist

“Write a thousand words a day and in three years you'll be a writer!”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

“writing about a writer's block is better than not writing at all”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

“Whoever we are here, we might be princesses somewhere else. Or writers. Or scientists. Or presidents. Or whatever the hell we want to be that everyone else says we can't.”

Candace Bushnell book The Carrie Diaries

“She thought a writer should work harder writing a book than she did reading it.”

Jeffrey Eugenides book The Marriage Plot

“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe. -John Muir, naturalist, explorer, and writer (1838-1914)”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

“Deliver me from writers who say the way they live doesn't matter. I'm not sure a bad person can write a good book. If art doesn't make us better, then what on earth is it for.”

Alice Walker (1944) American author and activist

“Certain unique books seem to be without forerunners or successors as far as their authors are concerned. Even though they may profoundly influence the work of other writers, for their creator they're complete, not leading anywhere.”

Dodie Smith book I Capture the Castle

“Once the writer in every individual comes to life (and that time is not far off), we are in for an age of universal deafness and lack of understanding.”

Milan Kundera book The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

“Yeah, well, we're all writers, aren't we? He's a writer that hasn't been published, and I'm a writer who hasn't written anything.”

Steve Martin (1945) American actor, comedian, musician, author, playwright, and producer

“A writer can do nothing for men more necessary, satisfying, than just simply to reveal to them the infinite possibility of their own souls.”

Walt Whitman (1819–1892) American poet, essayist and journalist

“So the writer who breeds more words than he needs, is making a chore for the reader who reads.”

Dr. Seuss (1904–1991) American children's writer and illustrator, co-founder of Beginner Books

“The great thing about being a writer is that you are always re-creating yourself.”

Martin Cruz Smith (1942) American writer

“Beauty breeds beauty, truth triggers truth. The cure for writer's block is therefore to read.”

Matt Haig (1975) British writer

“World War I was the most colossal, murderous, mismanaged butchery that has ever taken place on earth. Any writer who said otherwise lied, So the writers either wrote propaganda, shut up, or fought.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

“The role of the writer is not to say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say.”

Anaïs Nin book The Diary of Anaïs Nin

“I was the embodiment of every writer's worst fear: a cliché.”

Gillian Flynn book Gone Girl

“Writers have no real area of expertise. They are merely generalists with a highly inflamed sense of punctuation.”

Lorrie Moore (1957) American writer

“Who am I? I'm just a writer. I write things down. I walk through your dreams and invent the future. Sure, I sink the boat of love, but that comes later. And yes, I swallow glass, but that comes later.”

Richard Siken (1967) American poet

“All writers are insane!”

Cornelia Funke Inkheart trilogy

“Any writer worth his salt writes to please himself… It's a self-exploratory operation that is endless. An exorcism of not necessarily his demon, but of his divine discontent.”

Harper Lee (1926–2016) American author

“It is impossible to discourage the real writers - they don't give a damn what you say, they're going to write.”

Sinclair Lewis (1885–1951) American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright

“A writer never has a vacation. For a writer, life consists of either writing or thinking about writing.”

Eugéne Ionesco (1909–1994) Romanian playwright

“I have always been a huge admirer of my own work. I'm one of the funniest and most entertaining writers I know.”

Mel Brooks (1926) American director, writer, actor, and producer

“Hardly anyone still reads nowadays. People make use of the writer only in order to work off their own excess energy on him in a perverse manner, in the form of agreement or disagreement.”

Robert Musil book The Man Without Qualities

“If you're just starting out as a writer, you could do worse than strip your television's electric plug-wire, wrap a spike around it, and then stick it back into the wall. See what blows, and how far. Just an idea.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

“When a writer is born into a family, the family is finished.”

Czeslaw Milosz (1911–2004) Polish, poet, diplomat, prosaist, writer, and translator

“I am a writer who came from a sheltered life. A sheltered life can be a daring life as well. For all serious daring starts from within.”

Eudora Welty (1909–2001) American author

“Writers are always anxious, always on the run--from the telephone, from responsibilities, from the distractions of the world.”

Edna O'Brien (1930) Novelist, memoirist, biographer, playwright, poet and short story writer

“Perhaps I wasn't going crazy after all. Perhaps I was just becoming a writer.”

Janette Rallison (1966) American writer

“You become a writer because you need to become a writer - nothing else.”

Grace Paley (1922–2007) American writer and activist

“If you are a writer you locate yourself behind a wall of silence and no matter what you are doing, driving a car or walking or doing housework — you can still be writing, because you have that space.”

Joyce Carol Oates (1938) American author

“No one who cooks, cooks alone. Even at her most solitary, a cook in the kitchen is surrounded by generations of cooks past, the advice and menus of cooks present, the wisdom of cookbook writers.”

Laurie Colwin (1944–1992) Novelist, short story writer, food writer

“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.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book The Love of the Last Tycoon

“Those Grimm brothers," she said with a sigh, "they'll never amount to anything." And she was right because all they ever became was writers.”

Vivian Vande Velde (1951) American writer

“Every writer is a frustrated actor who recites his lines in the hidden auditorium of his skull.”

Rod Serling (1924–1975) American screenwriter

“I don't think writers are anythan other people. I think they may be more compelling in their stupidity, or in their.”

David Foster Wallace (1962–2008) American fiction writer and essayist

“writers are desperate people and when they stop being desperate they stop being writers.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

“I'm either going to be a writer or a bum.”

Carl Sandburg (1878–1967) American writer and editor

“Readers don’t work for writers. They work for themselves.”

Mohsin Hamid book How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia

“He asked, "What makes a man a writer?" "Well," I said, "it's simple. You either get it down on paper, or jump off a bridge.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

“Sometimes life coughs up coincidences no writer of fiction would dare copy.”

Stephen King book 11/22/63

“Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

“There's only one good reason to be a writer-we can't help it! We'd all like to be rich, famous and successful, but if those are our goals, we're off on a wrong foot… I just wanted to earn enough money so I could work at home on my writing.”

Phyllis A. Whitney (1903–2008) American writer

“We are not nouns, we are verbs. I am not a thing - an actor, a writer - I am a person who does things - I write, I act - and I never know what I'm going to do next. I think you can be imprisoned if you think of yourself as a noun.”

Stephen Fry (1957) English comedian, actor, writer, presenter, and activist

“Writers are always selling somebody out.”

Joan Didion (1934) American writer

“American writers ought to stand and live in the margins, and be more dangerous.”

Don DeLillo (1936) American novelist, playwright and essayist

“Reading is the creative center of a writer's life." -”

Stephen King (1947) American author

“What the semicolon's anxious supporters fret about is the tendency of contemporary writers to use a dash instead of a semicolon and thus precipitate the end of the world. Are they being alarmist?”

Lynne Truss (1955) British writer

“There are all kinds of writers. The best writers write children's books.”

Richard Scarry (1919–1994) author and illustrator from the United States

“Writer speaks a stench.”

Franz Kafka (1883–1924) author

“A writer is a world trapped in a person.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

“You know how writers are… they create themselves as they create their work. Or perhaps they create their work in order to create themselves.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

“She doesn't understand that a writer is a special creature--that I'm different from everyone else. I'm not saying I'm superior to other people, just more sensitive, I guess.”

Christopher Moore book Bloodsucking Fiends

“The real writer is one who really writes. Talent is an invention like phlogiston after the fact of fire. Work is its own cure. You have to like it better than being loved.”

Marge Piercy (1936) American novelist and poet

“I am a writer perhaps because I am not a talker.”

Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000) American writer

“To participate requires self-discipline and trust and courage, because this business of becoming conscious, of being a writer, is ultimately about asking yourself, as my friend Dale puts it, How alive am I willing to be?”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

“Life can't ever really defeat a writer who is in love with writing, for life itself is a writer's lover until death – fascinating, cruel, lavish, warm, cold, treacherous, constant.”

Edna Ferber (1885–1968) Novelist, playwright

“I am going to become a writer for Cosmo - you don’t have to make any sense at all. Or maybe I’ll be a bloke, they don’t have to make sense either.”

Louise Rennison book Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging