Quotes about writer

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“The most durable thing in writing is style, and style is the single most valuable investment a writer can make with his time.”

Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) Novelist, screenwriter

“Writing is hard work. But if you want to become a writer you will become one. Nothing will stop you.”

Dorothy Day (1897–1980) Social activist

“Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

“That 'writers write' is meant to be self-evident. People like to say it. I find it is hardly ever true. Writers drink. Writers rant. Writers phone. Writers sleep. I have met very few writers who write at all.”

Renata Adler (1938) American author, journalist and film critic

“Good writers are those who keep the language efficient.”

Ezra Pound book ABC of Reading

“Two hours of writing fiction leaves this writer completely drained. For those two hours he has been in a different place with totally different people.”

Roald Dahl (1916–1990) British novelist, short story writer, poet, fighter pilot and screenwriter

“… she felt about reading what some writers felt about writing: that it was impossible not to do it and that at this late stage of her life she had been chosen to read as others were chosen to write.”

Alan Bennett book The Uncommon Reader

“A writer wastes nothing.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

“Being a writer requires an intoxication with language.”

Jim Harrison (1937–2016) American novelist, poet, essayist

“I don't think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you might nudge the world a little or make a poem that children will speak for you when you are dead.”

Tom Stoppard The Real Thing

“You mean old books?"

"Stories written before space travel but about space travel."

"How could there have been stories about space travel before --"

"The writers," Pris said, "made it up.”

Philip K. Dick book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

“The Kafka paradox: art depends on truth, but truth, being indivisable, cannot know itself: to tell the truth is to lie. thus the writer is the truth, and yet when he speaks he lies.”

Franz Kafka (1883–1924) author

“Upon being asked by a fan how to become a writer, Stephen King replied, "Write.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

“I'm not a writer with a drinking problem, I'm a drinker with a writing problem.”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

“Writers and artists build by hand little worlds that they hope might effect change in real minds, in the real world where stories are read. A story can make us cry and laugh, break our hearts, or make us angry enough to change the world.”

Grant Morrison (1960) writer

“If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy.”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

“To be alive and to be a ‘writer’ is enough.”

Katherine Mansfield (1888–1923) New Zealand author

“Every human being has hundreds of separate people living under his skin. The talent of a writer is his ability to give them their separate names, identities, personalities and have them relate to other characters living with him.”

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

“Honest and earnest criticism from those whose interests are most nearly touched,- criticism of writers by readers, of government by those governed, of leaders by those led, - this is the soul of democracy and the safeguard of modern society”

W.E.B. Du Bois book The Souls of Black Folk

“This is a writer’s lesson:
To learn that the sounds that we imagine can be the clearest, loudest sounds of all.”

John Irving book Trying to Save Piggy Sneed

“Exercise the writing muscle every day, even if it is only a letter, notes, a title list, a character sketch, a journal entry. Writers are like dancers, like athletes. Without that exercise, the muscles seize up.”

Jane Yolen (1939) American speculative fiction and children's writer

“The vocation of each writer is to describe the world as he or she sees it; anything more than that is advertising.”

Hanif Kureishi (1954) English playwright, screenwriter, novelist

“Writers are such phonies: they sometimes have wise insights but they don't live by them at all. That's what writers are like… you think they know something, but usually they are just messes.”

Anne Sexton (1928–1974) poet from the United States

“A writer writes what he knows, in ways that are natural to him.”

Mo Yan (1955) Chinese novelist

“No black woman writer in this culture can write "too much". Indeed, no woman writer can write "too much"… No woman has ever written enough.”

Bell Hooks (1952) American author, feminist, and social activist

“Being a writer means crying over the sad parts, even though you already know it’s going to be okay.”

Clare B. Dunkle (1964) American writer

“There is no such thing as a good writer and a bad liar.”

Amy Bloom (1953) Fiction writer, screenwriter, social worker, psychotherapist

“Happy children do not seem to grow up to be writers.”

Piers Anthony (1934) English-American writer in the science fiction and fantasy genres

“Mice: What is the best early training for a writer?

Y. C.: An unhappy childhood.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

“Someone once told the Catholic writer Flannery O’Connor that it is more open-minded to think that the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar is a great, wonderful, powerful symbol.

Her response was, “If it’s only a symbol, to hell with it.”

Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964) American novelist, short story writer

“The road to wisdom is paved with excess.

The mark of a true writer is their ability to mystify the familiar and familiarize the strange.”

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

“All literature consists of whatever the writer thinks is cool. The reader will like the book to the degree that he agrees with the writer about what’s cool.”

Steven Brust (1955) American fantasy and science fiction author

“The best life for a writer is the life which helps him write the best books he can.”

Julian Barnes book Flaubert's Parrot

“A writer should write what he has to say and not speak it.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

“What we [writers] do might be done in solitude and with great desperation, but it tends to produce exactly the opposite. It tends to produce community and in many people hope and joy.”

Junot Díaz (1968) Dominican-American writer

“[A writer is] a priest of eternal imagination, transmuting the daily bread of experience into the radiant body of everliving life.”

James Joyce (1882–1941) Irish novelist and poet

“To be a writer you have to write -- and no academic degree is going to do the writing for you.”

Michelle Richmond (1970) American writer

“Anyone who is going to be a writer knows enough at fifteen to write several novels.”

May Sarton (1912–1995) American poet, novelist, and memoirist

“Do they sense it, these dead writers, when their books are read? Does a pinprick of light appear in their darkness? Is their soul stirred by the feather touch of another mind reading theirs? I do hope so.”

Diane Setterfield book The Thirteenth Tale

“If the writer were more like a reader, he’d be a reader, not a writer. It’s as uncomplicated as that.”

Julian Barnes book Flaubert's Parrot

“I am a strong believer in the tyranny, the dictatorship, the absolute authority of the writer.”

Philip Pullman (1946) English author

“… the truest writers are those who see language not as a linguistic process but as a living element…”

Derek Walcott (1930–2017) Saint Lucian–Trinidadian poet and playwright

“Part of being a writer is defending your vision and not caving in to outside pressures.”

Jennifer Crusie (1949) American writer

“Writers turn dreams into print.”

James A. Michener (1907–1997) American author

“For a writer, only one form of patriotism exists: his attitude toward language.”

Joseph Brodsky (1940–1996) Russian and American poet and Nobel Prize for Literature laureate

“The true writer has nothing to say. What counts is the way he says it.”

Alain Robbe-Grillet (1922–2008) 1922-2008 French agricultural engineer, filmmaker and writer

“The trick is not becoming a writer. The trick is staying a writer.”

Harlan Ellison book Strange Wine

“Reading at meals is considered rude in polite society, but if you expect to succeed as a writer, rudeness should be the second-to-least of your concerns. The least of all should be polite society and what it expects.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

“Every great or even every very good writer makes the world over according to his own specifications.”

Raymond Carver (1938–1988) American short story author and poet

“Writers are there to write, not experience things. If you want to experience things, become a pirate or a Bookhunter. If you want to write, write. If you can't find the makings of a story inside yourself, you won't find them anywhere.”

Walter Moers book The City of Dreaming Books

“The love between a writer and a reader is never celebrated.”

Patricia Duncker book Hallucinating Foucault

“The only advice I can give to aspiring writers is don't do it unless you're willing to give your whole life to it. Red wine and garlic also helps.”

Jim Harrison (1937–2016) American novelist, poet, essayist

“Imagination? It is the one thing beside honesty that a good writer must have. The more he learns from experience the more he can imagine.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

“A writer once said that it is not time that changes man, nor knowledge; the only thing that can change someone's mind is love. What nonsense! The person who wrote that clearly knew only one side of the coin.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

“If you want to be a writer-stop talking about it and sit down and write!”

Jackie Collins (1937–2015) British-American novelist and writer

“The Writer's Oath

I promise solemnly:

1. to write as often and as much as I can,

2. to respect my writing self, and

3. to nurture the writing of others.

I accept these responsibilities and shall honor them always.”

Gail Carson Levine (1947) American writer

“Good writers define reality; bad ones merely restate it. A good writer turns fact into truth; a bad writer will, more often than not, accomplish the opposite.”

Edward Albee (1928–2016) American playwright

“Panem et Circenses" translates into 'Bread and Circuses.' The writer was saying that in return for full bellies and entertainment, his people had given up their political responsibilities and therefore their power.”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

“It is the writer's privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart.”

William Faulkner (1897–1962) American writer

“If you're a writer, the answer to everything is yes.”

Nikki Giovanni (1943) American writer and academic

“Maybe television causes cancer, Garp thinks; but his real irritation is a writer's irritation: he knows that wherever the TV glows, there sits someone who isn't reading.”

John Irving book The World According to Garp

“The good writing of any age has always been the product of someone's neurosis, and we'd have a mighty dull literature if all the writers that came along were a bunch of happy chuckleheads.”

William Styron (1925–2006) American novelist and essayist

“There was nothing glorious about the life of a drinker or the life of a writer.”

Charles Bukowski book Hot Water Music

“Writing is a lonely job. Even if a writer socializes regularly, when he gets down to the real business of his life, it is he and his type writer or word processor. No one else is or can be involved in the matter.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

“You are either born a writer or you are not.”

Cormac McCarthy (1933) American novelist, playwright, and screenwriter

“The first thing that distinguishes a writer is that he is most alive when alone.”

Martin Amis (1949) Welsh novelist

“I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paperwork.”

Peter de Vries (1910–1993) American editor and novelist

“Good writers are monotonous, like good composers. They keep trying to perfect the one problem they were born to understand.”

Alberto Moravia (1907–1990) Italian writer and journalist

“Writers do not find subjects; subjects find them.”

Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973) Irish writer

“I advise those who want to become writers to study veterinary medicine, which is easier. You don't want to be a writer unless you have no choice - and if you have no choice, good luck to you.”

Robin McKinley (1952) American fantasy writer

“The good writer seems to be writing about himself, but has his eye always on that thread of the Universe which runs through himself and all things.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

“Being a writer is a good, good thing.”

Shannon Hale (1974) American fantasy novelist

“Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost what it feels about dogs.”

John Osborne (1929–1994) English playwright

“Writing isn't just a job that stops at six thirty… It's a mad, sexy, sad, scary, ruthless, joyful, and utterly, utterly personal thing. There's not the writer and then me; there's just me. All of my life connects to the writing. All of it.”

Russell T. Davies (1963) Screenwriter, former executive producer of Doctor Who

“I sometimes think it is because they are so bad at expressing themselves verbally that writers take to pen and paper in the first place”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

“Whenever I’m asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one.”

Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964) American novelist, short story writer

“If she were a writer she would collect her pencils and notebooks and favourite cat and write in bed. Strangers and lovers would never get past the locked door.”

Michael Ondaatje book The English Patient

“You just don't know writers. They'll use anything, anybody. They'll eat their young.”

Dennis Potter (1935–1994) English television dramatist, screenwriter and journalist

“A writer should write with his eyes and a painter paint with his ears.”

Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) American art collector and experimental writer of novels, poetry and plays

“I think of myself as a bad writer with big ideas, but I'd rather be that than a big writer with bad ideas.”

Michael Moorcock (1939) English writer, editor, critic

“take a writer away from his typewriter
and all you have left
is
the sickness
which started him
typing
in the
beginning”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

“The purpose of a writer is to keep civilisation from destroying itself."

(Interview,, September 14, 1958)”

Bernard Malamud (1914–1986) American author

“There's always time to read. Don't trust a writer who doesn't read. It's like eating food prepared by a cook who doesn't eat.”

Laura Lippman (1959) Detective fiction writer

“There is no such thing as an "aspiring writer". You are a writer. Period.”

Matthew Reilly book Area 7

“The Local Paper here asked that me books be banned…….. THE HIGHEST PRAISE for an Irish writer.”

Ken Bruen (1951) Irish writer

“Writing is a form of personal freedom. It frees us from the mass identity we see in the making all around us. In the end, writers will write not to be outlaw heroes of some underculture but mainly to save themselves, to survive as individuals.”

Don DeLillo (1936) American novelist, playwright and essayist

“One of the convenient things about literature is that, despite copyrights […] a book belongs to the reader as well as to the writer.”

Anne Fadiman (1953) American essayist, journalist and magazine editor

“A writer should not run around with a mirror for his countrymen; he should tell his society and his times things no one ever thought before.”

Stanisław Lem (1921–2006) Polish science fiction author

“Writing a story or a novel is one way of discovering sequence in experience, of stumbling upon cause and effect in the happenings of a writer's own life.”

Eudora Welty (1909–2001) American author

“I am a person before I am anything else. I never say I am a writer. I never say I am an artist… I am a person who does those things.”

Edward Gorey (1925–2000) American writer, artist, and illustrator

“A writer must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid.”

William Faulkner (1897–1962) American writer

“It is the function of art to renew our perception. What we are familiar with we cease to see. The writer shakes up the familiar scene, and, as if by magic, we see a new meaning in it.”

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

“A scene should be selected by the writer for haunted-ness-of-mind interest.
If you're not haunted by something, as by a dream, a vision, or a memory, which are involuntary, you're not interested or even involved.”

Jack Kerouac book Book of Sketches

“When a writer is swayed with his fame and his fortune, you can float him down the river with the turds.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

“Why do writers write? Because it isn't there.”

Thomas Berger (1952) German writer

“I'm glad I understand that while language is a gift, listening is a responsibility. (U. S. poet and writer, 1943- )”

Nikki Giovanni (1943) American writer and academic

“We cannot be all the writers all the time. We can only be who we are. Which leads me to my second point: writers do not write what they want, they write what they can.”

Zadie Smith (1975) British writer

“Your only responsibility as a writer is to be true to the story that has chosen you as its writer.”

Jean Little (1932) Canadian children's writer

“I have done, this year, what I said I would: overcome my fear of facing a blank page day after day, acknowledging myself, in my deepest emotions, a writer, come what may.”

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