Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.
—Cyril Connolly (1903–74) British Literary Critic, Writer
Never write anything that does not give you great pleasure. Emotion is easily transferred from the writer to the reader.
—Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French Writer, Moralist
All these books have lived together … inside my mind. They follow one another only on paper and because of an utter impossibility to let themselves be all written at the same time. Whatever book I write, I never devote myself to it completely, and the matter which most insistently requires me soon later develops, however, at the other end of me.
—Andre Gide (1869–1951) French Novelist
To note an artist’s limitations is but to define his talent. A reporter can write equally well about everything that is presented to his view, but a creative writer can do his best only with what lies within the range and character of his deepest sympathies.
—Willa Cather (1873–1947) American Novelist, Writer
I look better, feel better, make love better and I’ll tell you something else….I never lied better.
—George Burns (1896–1996) American Comedian
For a country to have a great writer is like having another government. That’s why no regime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones.
—Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian Dissident Novelist
Will you tell me my fault, frankly as to yourself, for I had rather wince, than die. Men do not call the surgeon to commend the bone, but to set it, Sir.
—Emily Dickinson (1830–86) American Poet
Undermining experience, embellishing experience, rearranging and enlarging experience into a species of mythology.
—Philip Roth (1933–2018) American Novelist, Short-story Writer
One can write out of love or hate. Hate tells one a great deal about a person. Love makes one become the person. Love, contrary to legend, is not half as blind, at least for writing purposes, as hate. Love can see the evil and not cease to be love. Hate cannot see the good and remain hate. The writer, writing out of hatred, will, thus, paint a far more partial picture than if he had written out of love.
—Jessamyn West
The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and all time.
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish Playwright
Writing a novel is actually searching for victims. As I write I keep looking for casualties. The stories uncover the casualties.
—John Irving (b.1942) American Novelist, Short-story Writer
I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last dingdong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet’s, the writer’s, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.
—William Faulkner (1897–1962) American Novelist
The acceptance that all that is solid has melted into the air, that reality and morality are not givens but imperfect human constructs, is the point from which fiction begins.
—Salman Rushdie (b.1947) Indian-born British Novelist
Every writer is a narcissist. This does not mean that he is vain; it only means that he is hopelessly self-absorbed.
—Leo Rosten (1908–97) Polish-born American Humorist, Screenwriter, Writer
The paperback is very interesting but I find it will never replace the hardcover book—it makes a very poor doorstop.
—Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980) British-born American Film Director, Film Producer
Only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language.
—Jane Austen (1775–1817) English Novelist
There is no longer any such thing as fiction or nonfiction; there’s only narrative.
—E. L. Doctorow (b.1931) American Writer, Editor, Academic
The writer may very well serve a movement of history as its mouthpiece, but he cannot of course create it.
—Karl Marx (1818–1883) German Philosopher, Economist
Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence.
—Alice Walker (b.1944) American Novelist, Activist
The only way out is the way through, just as you cannot escape from death except by dying. Being unable to write, you must examine in writing this being unable, which becomes for the present—henceforth?—the subject to which you are condemned.
—Howard Nemerov (1920–91) American Poet, Novelist, Playwright
A writer is unfair to himself when he is unable to be hard on himself.
—Marianne Moore (1887–1972) American Poet
Author: A fool who, not content with having bored those who have lived with him, insists on tormenting generations to come.
—Montesquieu (1689–1755) French Political Philosopher, Jurist
It is not my fault that certain so-called bohemian elements have found in my writings something to hang their peculiar beatnik theories on.
—Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) American Novelist, Poet
But words came halting forth, wanting Invention
—Philip Sidney (1554–86) English Soldier Poet, Courtier
I’d rather be a lightning rod than a seismograph.
—Ken Kesey (1935–2001) American Novelist, Essayist, Short Story Writer
If I don’t write to empty my mind, I go mad. As to that regular, uninterrupted love of writing. I do not understand it. I feel it as a torture, which I must get rid of, but never as a pleasure. On the contrary, I think composition a great pain.
—Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) (1788–1824) English Romantic Poet
All great novels, all true novels, are bisexual.
—Milan Kundera (b.1929) Czech Novelist
An author in his book must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere.
—Gustave Flaubert (1821–80) French Novelist, Playwright, Short Story Writer
Style and Structure are the essence of a book; great ideas are hogwash.
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) Russian-born American Novelist
The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.
—Tom Clancy (1947–2013) American Spy Novelist
Leave a Reply