Writers Quotes
Writers remember everything...especially the hurts. Strip a writer to the buff, point to the scars, ...
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Writing is a lonely job. Having someone who believes in you makes a lot if difference. They don't ha...
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I believe the first draft of a book — even a long one — should take no more than three months…Any lo...
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The truth is that most writers are needy.

He sometimes believed that the compulsion to make fiction was no more than a bulwark against confusi...
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I've met talespinners before, Jake, and they're all cut more or less from the same cloth. They tell ...
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Writing is no trouble: you just jot down ideas as they occur to you. The jotting is simplicity itsel...
Show MoreYou connect yourself to the viewer by by sharing something that is inside of you that connects with ...
Show MoreAs many political writers have pointed out, commitment to political equality is not an empirical cla...
Show MoreI now understand that writing fiction was a seed planted in my soul, though I would not be ready to ...
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I wonder if that's the perennial story of writers: you find the true light, you lose the true light,...
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A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the w
A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world.", Frankfurt Book Fair, October 12, 20...
Show MoreI have done, this year, what I said I would: overcome my fear of facing a blank page day after day, ...
Show MoreI think writers are the most narcissistic people. Well, I musn't say this, I like many of them, a gr...
Show MoreI suppose some editors are failed writers - but so are most writers.
An editor should tell the author his writing is better than it is. Not a lot better a little better...
Show MoreBut then, that’s the beauty of writing stories—each one is an exploratory journey in search of a rea...
Show MoreBut then, that’s the beauty of writing stories—each one is an exploratory journey in search of a rea...
Show More[Science fiction is] out in the mainstream now. You can tell by the way mainstream literary authors ...
Show MoreHe'd heard that writers spent all day in their dressing gowns drinking champagne. This is, of course...
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Make foes of bowmen if you must,Never of penmen.

What did one see if one looked in any depth into the world of this writer's fiction? Elegant self-co...
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A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.

We don't need any more writers as solitary heroes. We need a heroic writer's movement: assertive, mi...
Show MoreThat's not writing that's typing.
There is only one thing that you write for yourself, and that is a shopping list.

Meeting writers is always so disappointing. I got over wanting to meet live writers quite a long tim...
Show MoreI believe that all novels, ... deal with character, and that it is to express character – not to pre...
Show MoreWhat is fantasy? On one level, of course, it is a game: a pure pretense with no ulterior motive what...
Show MoreCollaborative workshops and writers' peer groups hadn't been invented when I was young. They're a wo...
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He is limp and damp and milder than the breath of a cow.
As for my next book I am going to hold myself from writing it till I have it impending in me: grown...
Show MoreI’ll be blasted’, he said, ‘if I ever write another word, or try to write another word, to please Ni...
Show MoreAnd there he would lie all day long on the lawn brooding presumably over his poetry, till he reminde...
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It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by. How else, indeed, to clap the net ...
Show MoreDamn you, spoilt creature; I shan’t make you love me any the more by giving myself away like this.

It is a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his...
Show MoreSome writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they s...
Show MoreNo poet or novelist wishes he was the only one who ever lived, but most of them wish they were the o...
Show MoreWell, you know when people are no good at anything else they become writers.

You cannot write unless you write much.

Writers, like teeth, are divided into incisors and grinders.
Writers are really people who write books not because they are poor, but because they are dissatisfi...
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Lear, Macbeth. Mercutio – they live on their own as it were. The newspapers are full of them, if we ...
Show MoreThat's why I've just gone on … collecting this particular kind of stuff – what you might call riff-r...
Show MoreI am always at a loss to know how much to believe of my own stories.
Others may write from the head, but he writes from the heart, and the heart will always understand h...
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I'm a writer. I write checks. Mostly fiction.
Regard yourself as a small corporation of one. Take yourself off on team-building exercises (long wa...
Show MoreWhen you put down the good things you ought to have done and leave out the bad things you did do - ...
Show MoreBut writing is a queer business. If one does anything that is sharp and keep enough to go over the l...
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The writer's only responsibility is to his art. He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one. ...
Show MoreI don't think anybody can teach anybody anything. I think that you learn it, but the young writer th...
Show MoreA 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...
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To present a whole world that doesn’t exist and make it seem real, we have to more or less pretend w...
Show MoreI'm against the picture of the artist as a starry-eyed visionary not really in control or knowing wh...
Show MoreSo to the wretched writer I should like to say that there’s one body only whose request for your car...
Show MoreThe 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...
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I have long gone about with a conviction on my mind that I had a work to do—a Work, if you like, wit...
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How do you write? You write, man, you write, that’s how…If you practice an art faithfully it will ma...
Show MoreAs a young child I wanted to be a writer because writers were rich and famous. They lounged around S...
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Although I write in English, and despite the fact that I’m from America, I consider myself an Armeni...
Show MoreYou 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 ...
Show MoreGood writing has an aliveness that keeps the reader reading from one paragraph to the next, and it's...
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Don't annoy your readers by over-explaining--by telling them something they already know or can figu...
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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...
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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...
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Most writers sow adjectives almost unconsciously into the soil of their prose to make it more lush a...
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...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...
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There are some writers who sweep us along so strongly in their current of energy--Normal mailer, Tom...
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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...
Show MoreWe need writers who fear nothing. ("Our Goal")
Heretics are the only [bitter] remedy against the entropy of human thought.("Literature, Revolution,...
Show MoreTell 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...
Show MoreI can write better than anyone who can write faster and I can write faster than anyone who can writ...
Show MoreIn that moment, Dan was reminded why he wanted to write in the first place. It was the same reason a...
Show MoreTo 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...
Show MoreYou have a great advantage as a writer, Monsieur,' said Poirot. 'You can relieve your feelings by ex...
Show MoreI 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...
Show MoreIf we loved Steve Aylett, really loved him in the way that he deserves, a selfless love that genuine...
Show MoreTo 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...
Show MoreWriters write to influence their readers, their preachers, their auditors, but always, at bottom, to...
Show MoreWriters write to influence their readers their preachers their auditors but always at bottom to...
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