Quotes about writing
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Franz Kafka (1883–1924) author

“Writers write to influence their readers, their preachers, their auditors, but always, at bottom, to be more themselves.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

“Write it, damn you, write it! What else are you good for?”

James Joyce (1882–1941) Irish novelist and poet

“To write something you have to risk making a fool of yourself.”

Anne Rice (1941) American writer

Fools

“The first thing you have to know about writing is that it is something you must do everyday. There are two reasons for this rule: Getting the work done and connecting with your unconscious mind.”

Walter Mosley (1952) American writer

“Create dangerously, for people who read dangerously…. Writing, knowing in part that no matter how trivial your words may seem, someday, somewhere, someone may risk his or her life to read them.”

Edwidge Danticat (1969) Novelist, short story writer, memoirist

Life, People, Reading, Parting

“Whenever you write on a subject that questions the status quo, there are bound to be many who wrestle with the issues”

Ted Dekker (1962) American writer

Source: The Slumber of Christianity: Awakening a Passion for Heaven on Earth

Question

“There was a moment when I changed from an amateur to a professional. I assumed the burden of a profession, which is to write even when you don't want to, don't much like what you're writing, and aren't writing particularly well.”

Agatha Christie (1890–1976) English mystery and detective writer

Source: An Autobiography

Change

“When male authors write love stories, the heroine tends to end up dead.”

Susan Elizabeth Phillips (1948) American writer

Source: Ain't She Sweet

Love, Dead

“I have forced myself to begin writing when I've been utterly exhausted, when I've felt my soul as thin as a playing card…and somehow the activity of writing changes everything.”

Joyce Carol Oates (1938) American author

Soul, Change

“The author should die once he has finished writing. So as not to trouble the path of the text.”

Umberto Eco (1932–2016) Italian semiotician, essayist, philosopher, literary critic, and novelist

Source: Postscript to the Name of the Rose

“It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous.”

Robert Benchley (1889–1945) American comedian

Quoted in Robert Benchley (1955) by Nathaniel Benchley, ch. 1

Time

“Memory is quite central for me. Part of it is that I like the actual texture of writing through memory…”

Kazuo Ishiguro book Never Let Me Go

Source: Never Let Me Go

Memory, Parting

“It's doubtful that anyone with an internet connection at his workplace is writing good fiction.”

Jonathan Franzen (1959) novelist

“When they give you lined paper, write the other way.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Misattributed
Variant: If they give you ruled paper, write the other way.
Source: Epigraph, in Fahrenheit 451 a translation of a statement by Juan Ramón Jiménez

Way, Motivational, Back To Work

“Writing is like breathing, it's possible to learn to do it well, but the point is to do it no matter what.”

Julia Cameron (1948) American writer

Source: The Right to Write: An Invitation and Initiation into the Writing Life

Learning

“Know that you will eventually have to leave everything behind; the writing will demand it of you.”

Natalie Goldberg (1948) American writer

“Melt all the guns, I thought, break the knives, burn the guillotines-and the malicious will still write letters that kill.”

Ray Bradbury book Death Is a Lonely Business

Source: Death Is a Lonely Business

“There are very few innocent sentences in writing.”

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

“The world is your exercise book, the pages on which you do your sums. It is not reality, though you may express reality there if you wish. You are also free to write lies, or nonsense, or to tear the pages.”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

Source: Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

Books, World, Exercises, Reality

“I am not at all in a humor for writing; I must write on till I am.”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

“Rock 'n' roll is an attitude, it's not a musical form of a strict sort. It's a way of doing things, of approaching things. Writing can be rock 'n' roll, or a movie can be rock 'n' roll. It's a way of living your life.”

Lester Bangs (1948–1982) American music critic and journalist

Life, Music, Way

“I want life. I want to read it and write it and feel it and live it. I want, for as much of the time as possible in this blink-of-an-eye existence we have, to feel all that can be felt.”

Matt Haig book Reasons to Stay Alive

Source: Reasons to Stay Alive

Life, Feeling, Time, Reading

“One must be an inventor to read well. There is then creative reading as well as creative writing.”

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

Variant: There is creative reading as well as creative writing.

Reading

“Write as if your parents are dead.”

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

Parent, Dead

“If you like not my writing, go read something else.”

Robert Burton book The Anatomy of Melancholy

Source: The Anatomy of Melancholy

Reading

“There are lots of guys out there who write a better prose line than I do and who have a better understanding of what people are really like and what humanity is supposed to mean – hell, I know that.”

Stephen King book Misery

Source: Misery

People, Guy, Hell, Understanding

“I find that most people know what a story is until they sit down to write one.”

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

People

“Writing is more about discovery than invention.”

Diane Setterfield (1964) English novelist

“It is rather exciting to write by moonlight.”

Dodie Smith book I Capture the Castle

Source: I Capture the Castle

“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

Time

“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

“Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

Address at Milton Academy, Massachusetts (17 May 1935)
1930s
Variant: Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.

“Talking is a hydrant in the yard and writing is a faucet upstairs in the house. Opening the first takes all the pressure off the second.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

Letter to Sydney Cox (3 January 1937), quoted in Robert Frost : The Trial By Existence (1960) by Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant, p. 351, and Robert Frost and Sidney Cox: Forty Years of Friendship (1981) by William Richard Evans, p. 223
General sources
Context: Talking is a hydrant in the yard and writing is a faucet upstairs in the house. Opening the first takes all the pressure off the second. My mouth is sealed for the duration of my stay here. I'm not even going to write letters around to explain to collectors my not having had any Christmas card this year. I'm not going to explain anything personal any more.

Housing

“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

Source: Speedboat

People, Drink, Sleep

“Different people were good at different things, Lena mused. Lena was good at writing thank-you notes, for instance, and Effie was good at being happy.”

Ann Brashares The Second Summer of the Sisterhood

Source: The Second Summer of the Sisterhood

Happiness, People

“I'm telling you why we broke up, Ed. I'm writing this letter, the whole truth of why it happened. And the truth is that I goddamn loved you so much.”

Daniel Handler book Why We Broke Up

Source: Why We Broke Up

Love, Truth

“If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are gone, either write things worth reading or do things worth writing.”

Carson McCullers (1917–1967) American writer

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

People

“i believe that basically you write for two people; yourself to try and make it absolutely perfect; or if not that then wonderful. then you write for who you love whether they can read or write or not and whether they are alive or dead.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Love, People, Reading, Perfection

“This is worse than Hollywood, he thought. A girl comes in with a pork chop and I write a song for her.”

Eva Ibbotson (1925–2010) British children's writer

Girl

“Panicky despair is an underrated element of writing.”

Dave Barry (1947) American writer

Despair

“… 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

Source: The Uncommon Reader

Life, Reading

“I’m a word freak. I like words. I’ve always compared writing to music. That’s the way I feel about good paragraphs. When it really works, it’s like music.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

Music, Way, Feeling

“nothing can save
you
except
writing.
it keeps the walls
from
failing.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

“Maybe you're one of those people who writes poems, but rarely reads them. Let me put this as delicately as I can: If you don't read, your writing is going to suck.”

Kim Addonizio (1954) Poet, novelist

Source: Ordinary Genius: A Guide for the Poet Within

People, Reading

“I hate writing, I love having written.”

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

Love, Hate

“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

Drink, Problem

“Nothing quite has reality for me till I write it all down--revising and embellishing as I go. I'm always waiting for things to be over so I can get home and commit them to paper.”

Erica Jong (1942) Novelist, poet, memoirist, critic

Home, Reality, Waiting

“You mean you're comparing our lives to a sonnet? A strict form, but freedom within it? Yes. Mrs. Whatsit said. You're given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself. What you say is completely up to you.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Source: A Wrinkle in Time: With Related Readings

Freedom

“A good novelist does not lead his characters, he follows them. A good novelist does not create events, he watches them happen and then writes down what he sees.”

Stephen King book Finders Keepers

Source: Finders Keepers

“The traditional statement about language is that it is in itself living, and that writing is the dead part of language.”

Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) French philosopher (1930-2004)

Parting, Dead

“At that moment, the urge to be writing was stronger than any notion she had of what she might write.”

Ian McEwan book Atonement

Source: Atonement

“Write in recollection and amazement for yourself”

Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) American writer

"Belief & Technique For Modern Prose: List of Essentials" http://writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/kerouac-technique.html in a letter to Arabelle Porter (28 May 1955); published in Jack Kerouac: Selected Letters 1940-1956 (1995) and in a letter to Don Allen (1958); published in Heaven & Other Poems (1977)

“You write for the people in high school who ignored you. We all do.”

Carolyn Kizer (1925–2014) American poet

People, School

“I write because I hate. A lot. Hard.”

William H. Gass (1924–2017) Fiction writer, critic, philosophy professor

Hate

“I want to write about people who dream and wait for the night to end, who long for the light so they can hold the ones they love.”

Haruki Murakami (1949) Japanese author, novelist

Source: After the Quake

Love, People, Dreams, Light

“Whenever I have endured or accomplished some difficult task -- such as watching television, going out socially or sleeping -- I always look forward to rewarding myself with the small pleasure of getting back to my typewriter and writing something.”

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

Pleasure, Sleep

“If I lose the light of the sun, I will write by candlelight, moonlight, no light. If I lose paper and ink, I will write in blood on forgotten walls. I will write always. I will capture nights all over the world and bring them to you.”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

Do I Come Here Often

World, Light, Sun, Night

“Self-consciousness is the enemy of all art, be it acting, writing, painting, or living itself, which is the greatest art of all.”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

Art, Painting

“Nothing but writing rests me; only then do I seem completely myself!”

Kate Douglas Wiggin (1856–1923) American writer

“I read hungrily and delightedly, and have realized since that you can’t write unless you read.”

William Trevor (1928–2016) Irish writer

Reading

“He is trying to recapture his innocence, yet all he succeeds in doing (by writing) is to inoculate the world with a virus of his disillusionment.”

Henry Miller book Sexus

Context: A man writes to throw off the poison which he has accumulated because of his false way of life. He is trying to recapture his innocence, yet all he succeeds in doing is to inoculate the world with a virus of his disillusionment. No man would set a word down on paper if he had the courage to live out what he believed in....

The Rosy Crucifixion I : Sexus (1949), Chapter 1. (New York: Grove Press, c1965, p. 17-18)

World

“I write as a function. Without it I would fall ill and die. It's as much a part of one as the liver or intestine, and just about as glamorous.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Source: Portions from a Wine-Stained Notebook: Uncollected Stories and Essays, 1944-1990

Parting

“History is written by the victors, but it's victims who write the memoirs.”

Carol Tavris (1944) American psychologist

Source: Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts

History

“If you can speak what you will never hear, if you can write what you will never read, you have done rare things.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/7cncd10.txt (1849), Thursday

Reading

“One day, I shall explode like an artillery shell and all my bits will be found on the writing table.”

Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880) French writer (1821–1880)

“I don't see how you can write anything of value if you don't offend someone.”

Marvin Harris (1927–2001) American anthropologist

“If they give you lined paper, write the other way.”

William Carlos Williams (1883–1963) American poet

Way, Motivational, Back To Work

“Once writing has become your major vice and greatest pleasure only death can stop it.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Paris Review interview (1958)

Death, Pleasure

“I can't believe it! Reading and writing actually paid off!”

Matt Groening (1954) American cartoonist

Reading

“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

Exercises

“My own great-grandfather, who said simply enough, "No wicked man could write such a book as this; and no good man would write it unless it were true and he were commanded of God to do so.”

Jeffrey R. Holland (1940) Mormon leader

God, Books

“Find what causes a commotion in your heart. Find a way to write about that”

Richard Ford (1944) American novelist and short story writer

Way, Heart

“Write what you know will always be excellent advice for those who ought not to write at all. Write what you think, what you imagine, what you suspect!”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

"Thomas Love Peacock: The Novel of Ideas" (1980)
1980s, The Second American Revolution (1983)
Variant: In any case, write what you know will always be excellent advice to those who ought not to write at all.
Source: The Essential Gore Vidal

Imagination, Thinking

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

Mo Yan (1955) Chinese novelist

Source: Shifu: You'll Do Anything for a Laugh and Other Stories

Way, Nature

“It takes a lot of energy and a lot of neurosis to write a novel. If you were really sensible, you'd do something else.”

Lawrence Durrell (1912–1990) British novelist, poet, dramatist, and travel writer

“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

Source: remembered rapture: the writer at work

“When I read a book, I put in all the imagination I can, so that it is almost like writing the book as well as reading it - or rather, it is like living it. It makes reading so much more exciting, but I don't suppose many people try to do it.”

Dodie Smith book I Capture the Castle

Source: I Capture the Castle

People, Books, Imagination, Reading

“Trying to write about love is ultimately like trying to have a dictionary represent life. No matter how many words there are, there will never be enough.”

David Levithan The Lover's Dictionary

Source: The Lover's Dictionary

Love, Life

“A certain ruthlessness and a sense of alienation from society is as essential to creative writing as it is to armed robbery.”

Nelson Algren book Nonconformity

Source: Nonconformity (1953/1996)
Context: You don't write a novel out of sheer pity any more than you blow a safe out of a vague longing to be rich. Compassion is all to the good, but vindictiveness is the verity Faulkner forgot: the organic force in every creative effort, from the poetry of Villon to the Brinks Express Robbery, that gives shape and color to all our dreams. [... ] A certain ruthlessness and a sense of alienation from society is as essential to creative writing as it is to armed robbery. The strong-armer isn't out merely to turn a fast buck any more than the poet is out solely to see his name on the cover of a book, whatever satisfaction that event may afford him. What both need most deeply is to get even. And, of course, neither will.

Sense

“An autobiography is a book a person writes about his own life and it is usually full of all sorts of boring details.”

Roald Dahl book Boy

Source: Boy: Tales of Childhood

Life, Books, Personality

“But it's writing, damn it, not washing the car or putting on eyeliner. If you can take it seriously, we can do business. If you can't or won't, it's time for you to close the book and do something else.

Wash the car, maybe.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

Source: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

Books, Cars, Business, Time