Writers-on-writing Quotes

Every reader, as he reads, is actually the reader of himself. The writer's work is only a kind of op...

When it's in a book I don't think it'll hurt any more ...exist any more. One of the things writing d...

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

I assure you, I've come to one of those natural breaks in the book, where one can walk away and let ...

Writing is a little bit like prostitution. First you do it for love. Then you do it for a few friend...

The truth seems to be, however, that, when he casts his leaves forth upon the wind, the author addre...

Writers are cannibals. They really are. They are predators, and if you are friends with them, and if...

Forgive my asking you to use your mind. It is a thing which no novelist should expect of his reader....

Don't be a writer; it's a terrible way to live your life. There's nothing to be gained from it but p...

You want to be a writer, don't know how or when? Find a quiet place, use a humble pen.

You want to be a writer, don't know how or when? Find a quiet place, use a humble pen.

The authentic human being is one of us who instinctively knows what he should not do, and, in additi...

Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite:"Fool!" said my muse to me, "look in thy heart, and w...

It is a wise writer who knows his own subconscious.

I had once tried to write, had once reveled in feeling, had let m crude imagination roam, but the im...

A writer who hasn't written anything worth-while is a most doubtful person.

...I have this one nasty habit. Makes me hard to live with. I write......writing is antisocial. It's...

Poor, harmless paper, that might have gone to print a Shakespeare on, and was instead so clumsily de...

Far and away the greatest menace to the writer—any writer, beginning or otherwise—is the reader. The...

Far and away the greatest menace to the writer—any writer, beginning or otherwise—is the reader. The...

Far and away the greatest menace to the writer—any writer, beginning or otherwise—is the reader. The...

Far and away the greatest menace to the writer—any writer, beginning or otherwise—is the reader. The...

...so I think writers are made and not born. But what you choose to write is buried so deeply inside...

There are lots of guys out there who write a better prose line than I do and who have a better under...

But if you needed to HAVE AN IDEA, boredom could be to a roadblocked novel what chemotherapy was to ...

Writing isn't about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In...

Because here’s the thing: No matter how much one tells stories of magical beasts or impossible world...

But then all writers smoke, don't they? And drink? And sit in front of computer screens till their a...

There is no literature and art without paranoia. Probably there would be even civilization. Paranoia...

There's a difference between writing for a living and writing forlife. If you write for a living, yo...

Predictions are uttered by prophets (free of charge); by clairvoyants (who usually charge a fee, and...

Needless to say, the business of living interferes with the solitude so needed for any work of the i...

Ink, a Drug.

Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they s...

Every year hundreds of books, many of considerable merit, pass unnoticed. Each one has taken the aut...

Writing is not a searching about in the daily experience for apt similes and pretty thoughts and ima...

Henry had written a novel because there was a hole in him that needed filling, a question that neede...

Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand, but tell it.

A great writer picks up on those things that matter. It’s almost like their radar is attuned to the ...

Writers haven't got any rockets to blast off. We don't even trundle the most insignificant auxiliary...

You can never be an artist if your work comes without effort. That is the problem with modern ink fr...

We still and always want waking. We should amass half dressed in long lines like tribesmen and shake...

Writing every book, the writer must solve two problems: Can it be done? and, Can I do it? Every book...

Write as if you were dying. At the same time, assume you write for an audience consisting solely of ...

Once I was asked be a seatmate on a trans-Pacific flight....what instruction he should give his fift...

The last thing we discover in composing a work is what to put down first.

Isolation is a gift. Everything else is just a test of your endurance. You will be alone with the Go...

Most writers who are beginners, if they are honest with themselves, will admit that they are praying...

If you really have talent, you know, you'll go on writing - whatever people say to you.

It seemed to me then that to have published a book - any kind of book - would be the greatest possib...

Maybe I write because I’ve learned to show certain parts of my heart on the page that I still strugg...

The task of the artist at any time is uncompromisingly simple — to discover what has not yet been do...

A great writer creates a world of his own and his readers are proud to live in it. A lesser writer m...

Do you know why I believe in the novel? It’s a democratic shout. Anybody can write a great novel, on...

When a writer doesn’t show his face, he becomes a local symptom of God’s famous reluctance to appear...

It's amazing what you find out about yourself when you write in the first person about someone very ...

Persons curious in chronology may, if they like, work out from what they already know of the Wimsey ...

The main thing I try to do is write as clearly as I can. I rewrite a good deal to make it clear.

There is nothing harder to estimate than a writer's time, nothing harder to keep track of. There are...

Writing is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make...

He has always admired writers who each day begin a journey towards the unknown and who nevertheless ...

When I am working on a book or a story I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. ...

A writer's style should be direct and personal, his imagery rich and earthy, and his words simple an...

Mice: What is the best early training for a writer?Y.C.: An unhappy childhood.

I am a writer who came from a sheltered life. A sheltered life can be a daring life as well. For all...

When you start searching for ‘pure elements’ in literature you will find that literature has been cr...

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

Mostly, we authors must repeat ourselves - that's the truth. We have two or three great and moving e...

I write whenever it suits me. During a creative period I write every day a novel should not be inter...

I think there are two types of writers, the architects and the gardeners. The architects plan everyt...

I write for myself and strangers. The strangers, dear Readers, are an afterthought.

A writer's knowledge of himself, realistic and unromantic, is like a store of energy on which he mus...

The conditions of writing change absolutely between the first novel and the second: the first is an ...

You have to dream intentionally. Most people dream a dream when they are asleep. But to be a writer,...

Capture your reader, let him not depart, from dull beginnings that refuse to start

I've always considered writing the most hateful kind of work. I suspect it's a bit like fucking, whi...

I have no taste for either poverty or honest labor, so writing is the only recourse left for me.

When I was a little boy, they called me a liar, but now that I'm a grown up, they call me a writer.

As far as you are able to gather from hints scattered through these letters, Apocryphal Power, riven...

...if he can write a book at all, a writer cannot do it by peeping over his shoulder at somebody els...

Writers really don't retire, you know. They have to be taken out and shot.

I admire the person who can write it right off. Mencken once said that a person who thinks clearly c...

We write not just to show off, not just to tell, or only to have written. We write to know ourselves...

The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not sh...

Fictional characters are made of words, not flesh; they do not have free will, they do not exercise ...

Why do writers use symbolism?” Okay, so let’s say you have a headache and you wanna tell someone abo...

I still believe in you, as a writer, but the only stuff we ever had in common doesn't travel very fa...

A man who writes a story is forced to put into it the best of his knowledge and the best of his feel...

The design of a book is the pattern of a reality controlled and shaped by the mind of a writer.

There is a curious idea among unscientific men that in scientific writing there is a common plateau ...

Getting the first draft finished is like pushing a very dirty peanut across the floor with your nose...

Judging your early artistic efforts is artist abuse.

Writing for the sake of writing, writing that draws its credibility from its very existence, is a fo...

My language is the common prostitute that I turn into a virgin.

He would write and write. He would make wonderful things happen. Some of it would be true. All of it...

The very persons who have taken away my time and space are those who have given me something to say.

To refer even in passing to unpublished or struggling authors and their problems is to put oneself a...

Write if you will: but write about the world as it is and as you think it ought to be and must be—if...

Write if you will: but write about the world as it is and as you think it ought to be and must be—if...

A writer’s brain is like a magician’s hat. If you’re going to get anything out of it, you have to pu...