Writers Quotes

The writer's only responsibility is to his art. He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one. ...

I don't think anybody can teach anybody anything. I think that you learn it, but the young writer th...

A writer is congenitally unable to tell the truth and that is why we call what he writes fiction.

A hack writer who would not have been considered fourth rate in Europe."(on Mark Twain)

Only Southerners have taken horsewhips and pistols to editors about the treatment or maltreatment of...

To present a whole world that doesn’t exist and make it seem real, we have to more or less pretend w...

I'm against the picture of the artist as a starry-eyed visionary not really in control or knowing wh...

So to the wretched writer I should like to say that there’s one body only whose request for your car...

The only impeccable writers are those who never wrote.

Footnotes the little dogs yapping at the heels of the text.

Mark to yourself the gradual way in which you have been prepared for, and are now led by an irresist...

I have long gone about with a conviction on my mind that I had a work to do—a Work, if you like, wit...

How do you write? You write, man, you write, that’s how…If you practice an art faithfully it will ma...

As a young child I wanted to be a writer because writers were rich and famous. They lounged around S...

Although I write in English, and despite the fact that I’m from America, I consider myself an Armeni...

You know the look: genius gone to pot, and ready to join the Communist Party

I do not know what makes a writer, but it probably isn't happiness.

Every great and original writer in proportion as he is great and original must himself create the ...

Good writing has an aliveness that keeps the reader reading from one paragraph to the next, and it's...

Don't annoy your readers by over-explaining--by telling them something they already know or can figu...

Good writing is good writing, whatever form it takes and whatever we call it.

The final advantage is the same that applies in every other competitive venture. If you would like t...

Writing is such a lonely work that I try to keep myself cheered up.

Most writers sow adjectives almost unconsciously into the soil of their prose to make it more lush a...

Most writers sow adjectives almost unconsciously into the soil of their prose to make it more lush a...

...being "rather unique" is no more possible than being rather pregnant.

I'm often dismayed by the sludge I see appearing on my screen if I approach writing as a task--the d...

There are some writers who sweep us along so strongly in their current of energy--Normal mailer, Tom...

The writer, his eye on the finish line, never gave enough thought to how to run the race.

Now as through this world I ramble I see lots of funny men Some rob you with a six gun Some with a...

We need writers who fear nothing. ("Our Goal")

Heretics are the only [bitter] remedy against the entropy of human thought.("Literature, Revolution,...

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

Nature not content with denying him the ability to think has endowed him with the ability to write...

I can write better than anyone who can write faster and I can write faster than anyone who can writ...

In that moment, Dan was reminded why he wanted to write in the first place. It was the same reason a...

To create art with all the passion in one's soul is to live art with all the beauty in one's heart.

I place my fingers upon these keys typing 2,000 dreams per minute and naked of spirit dance forth my...

You have a great advantage as a writer, Monsieur,' said Poirot. 'You can relieve your feelings by ex...

I have always noticed that these artists and writers are very unbalanced

As a writer one is allowed to have conversations with oneself. What is considered sane in writers is...

If we loved Steve Aylett, really loved him in the way that he deserves, a selfless love that genuine...

To write is to become disinterested. There is a certain renunciation in art.

The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.

People can think only in images. If you want to be a philosopher, write novels.

Every true writer is like a bird; he repeats the same song, the same theme, all his life. For me, th...

Writers write to influence their readers, their preachers, their auditors, but always, at bottom, to...

Writers write to influence their readers their preachers their auditors but always at bottom to...

A man really writes for an audience of about ten persons. Of course if others like it that is clear...

If you're silent for a long time, people just arrive in your mind.

All writers of confessions from Augustine on down, have always remained a little in love with their ...

It is the function of art to renew our perception. What we are familiar with we cease to see. The wr...

A big enough artist, I say, can eat anything, must eat everything and then alchemize it. Only the fe...

Perhaps behind our occasional hostility toward the artist and writer there may be a slight tinge of ...

Because of the earth’s roundness, Genghis Khan, in the fever of possession and destruction, hastened...

I hoped at first to find a rather more direct comprehension of life in one or two novelists and poet...

I do not love men: I love what devours them.

Style is the hallmark of a temperament stamped upon the material at hand.

I still encourage anyone who feels at all compelled to write to do so. I just try to warn people who...

Becoming a writer is about becoming conscious. When you're conscious and writing from a place of ins...

Writing like this is a little like milking a cow: the milk is so rich and delicious, and the cow is ...

Seeing yourself in print is such an amazing concept: you can get so much attention without having to...

A writer paradoxically seeks the truth and tells lies every step of the way. It's a lie if you make ...

You are lucky to be one of those people who wishes to build sand castles with words, who is willing ...

I like to think that Henry James said his classic line, "A writer is someone on whom nothing is lost...

I don't know where to start," one [writing student] will wail. Start with your childhood, I tell the...

Say to yourself in the kindest possible way, Look, honey, all we're going to for now is to write a d...

The society to which we belong seems to be dying or is already dead. I don't mean to sound dramatic,...

Toni Morrison said, "The function of freedom is to free someone else," and if you are no longer wrac...

He is a writer. He makes the rest of them nervous.

Writers had a way of redeeming everything that ever happens to them.

I have from the first felt sure that the writer, when he sits down to commence his novel, should do ...

My own experience is that once a story has been written one has to cross out the beginning and the ...

Begin with another's to end with your own.

The truth is that James, like many other great writers and artists, had chosen his own loyalties and...

...The question is, why do you think you can't be a writer?""To be a writer, you need readers.""I'm ...

I learned to write by reading the kind of books I wished I'd written.

All we have is compassion and stories.

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

I mostly want to remind her of the recipes of healing, and give her my own made-on-the spot remedy f...

One man is as good as another until he has written a book.

The purpose of a writer is to keep civilisation from destroying it

The purpose of a writer is to keep civilisation from destroying itself.", September 14, 1958)

People who understand everything get no stories.

Even those who write against fame wish for the fame of having written well, and those who read their...

I have only made this letter rather long because I have not had time to make it shorter.

The world does not need more Christian literature. What it needs is more Christians writing good lit...

He possessed the logic of all good intentions and a knowledge of all the tricks of his trade, and ye...

I have cultivated my hysteria with joy and terror.

Relate comic things in pompous fashion. Irregularity, in other words the unexpected, the surprising,...

What is your advice to young writers?” “Drink, fuck and smoke plenty of cigarettes.

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

don’t be like so many writers,don’t be like so many thousands ofpeople who call themselves writers,d...

unless it comes out ofyour soul like a rocket,unless being still woulddrive you to madness orsuicide...

great writers are indecent peoplethey live unfairlysaving the best part for paper.good human beings ...

The centuries are sprinkled with rare magicwith divine creatureswho help us get past the common and ...

There is a problem with writers. If what a writer wrote was published and sold many, many copies, th...

I have tried lately to read Shakespeare and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me.

Writers cannot choose their own mood: with them it is not always hide-tide, nor --thank Heaven!--alw...

The manager of my line told me, You never put anything down except to be read. Every word ever writt...