A novelist is, like all mortals, more fully at home on the surface of the present than in the ooze of the past.
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) Russian-born American Novelist
People think that I can teach them style. What stuff it all is. Have something to say and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret of style.
—Matthew Arnold (1822–88) English Poet, Critic
Nowadays three witty turns of phrase and a lie make a writer.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–99) German Philosopher, Physicist
Writing crystallizes thought and thought produces action.
—Paul J. Meyer
A writer needs loneliness, and he gets his share of it. He needs love, and he gets shared and also unshared love. He needs friendship. In fact, he needs the universe. To be a writer is, in a sense, to be a day-dreamer – to be living a kind of double life.
—Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine Writer, Essayist, Poet
All writers are vain, selfish and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives lies a mystery. Writing a book is a long, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.
—George Orwell (1903–50) English Novelist, Journalist
Beneath the rule of men entirely great,
The pen is mightier than the sword.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton (1803–73) British Novelist, Poet, Politician
The purpose of a work of fiction is to appeal to the lingering after-effects in the reader’s mind as differing from, say, the purpose of oratory or philosophy which respectively leave people in a fighting or thoughtful mood.
—Unknown
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
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
Good novels are not written by orthodoxy-sniffers, nor by people who are conscience-stricken about their own orthodoxy. Good novels are written by people who are not frightened.
—George Orwell (1903–50) English Novelist, Journalist
I think what I love most about writing is that feeling that you really nailed something. I rarely feel it with a whole piece, but sometimes with a line you feel that it really captured what it is that you had inside you and you got it out for a stranger to read, someone who may never love you or meet you, but he or she is going to get that experience from that line.
—Andre Dubus (1936–99) American Short Story Writer, Essayist
I wrote a poem to the moon
But no one noticed it;
Although I hoped that late or soon
Someone would praise a bit
Its purity and grace forlone,
Its beauty tulip-cool…
But as my poem died still-born,
I felt a fool.
I wrote a verse of vulgar trend
Spiced with an oath or two;
I tacked a snapper at the end
And called it Dan McGrew.
I spouted it to bar-room boys,
Full fifty years away;
Yet still with rude and ribald noise
It lives today.
‘Tis bitter truth, but there you are-
That’s how a name is made;
Write of a rose, a lark, a star,
You’ll never make the grade.
But write of gutter and of grime,
Of pimp and prostitute,
The multitude will read your rhyme,
And pay to boot.
So what’s the use to burn and bleed
And strive for beauty’s sake?
No one your poetry will read,
Your heart will only break.
But set your song in vulgar pitch,
If rhyme you will not rue,
And make your heroine a bitch…
Like Lady Lou.
—Robert W. Service (1874–1958) Scottish Poet, Author
A writer is unfair to himself when he is unable to be hard on himself.
—Marianne Moore (1887–1972) American Poet
Creative writers are always greater than the causes that they represent.
—E. M. Forster (1879–1970) English Novelist, Short Story Writer, Essayist
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
Any writer, I suppose, feels that the world into which he was born is nothing less than a conspiracy against the cultivation of his talent.
—James Baldwin (1924–87) American Novelist, Social Critic
When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American Author, Journalist, Short Story Writer
Our work is to present things that are as they are.
—Frederick II of Prussia (1712–86) Prussian Monarch
Yes, it’s hard to write, but it’s harder not to.
—Carl Clinton Van Doren (1885–1950) American Critic, Historian
First, I do not sit down at my desk to put into verse something that is already clear in my mind. If it were clear in my mind, I should have no incentive or need to write about it. We do not write in order to be understood; we write in order to understand.
—Cecil Day-Lewis (1904–72) British Poet, Critic
Sit down and put down everything that comes into your head and then you’re a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff’s worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.
—Colette (1873–1954) French Novelist, Performer
The responsibility of a writer is to excavate the experience of the people who produced him.
—James Baldwin (1924–87) American Novelist, Social Critic
Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer’s loneliness, but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day.
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American Author, Journalist, Short Story Writer
To finish is a sadness to a writer – a little death. He puts the last word down and it is done. But it isn’t really done. The story goes on and leaves the writer behind, for no story is ever done.
—John Steinbeck (1902–68) American Novelist, Short Story Writer, Journalist
Democritus plucked his eye out because he could not look at a woman without thinking of her as a woman. If he had read a few of our novels, he would have torn himself to pieces.
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American Poet
Fiction is the truth inside the lie.
—Stephen King (b.1947) American Novelist, Short-Story Writer, Screenwriter, Columnist, Film Director
The writer probably knows what he meant when he wrote a book, but he should immediately forget what he meant when he’s written it.
—William Golding (1911–93) English Novelist
No one who cannot limit himself has ever been able to write.
—Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux (1636–1711) French Poet, Satirist, Literary Critic
On the day when a young writer corrects his first proof-sheet he is as proud as a schoolboy who has just got his first dose of pox.
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–67) French Poet, Art Critic, Essayist, Translator
To write what is worth publishing, to find honest people to publish it, and get sensible people to read it, are the three great difficulties in being an author.
—Charles Caleb Colton (c.1780–1832) English Clergyman, Aphorist
It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by. How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment? For the moment passes, it is forgotten; the mood is gone; life itself is gone. That is where the writer scores over his fellows: he catches the changes of his mind on the hop. Growth is exciting; growth is dynamic and alarming. Growth of the soul, growth of the mind.
—Vita Sackville-West (1892–1962) English Gardener, Author, Poet
The older author is constantly rediscovering himself in the more or less fossilized productions of his earlier years.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–94) American Physician, Essayist
There is something about the literary life that repels me, all this desperate building of castles on cobwebs, the long-drawn acrimonious struggle to make something important which we all know will be gone forever in a few years, the miasma of failure which is to me almost as offensive as the cheap gaudiness of popular success.
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) American Novelist
In this work are exhibited in a very high degree the two most engaging powers of an author. New things are made familiar, and familiar things are made new.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
Ultimately, literature is nothing but carpentry. With both you are working with reality, a material just as hard as wood.
—Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1927–2014) Colombian Novelist, Short-Story Writer
The discipline of the written word punishes both stupidity and dishonesty.
—John Steinbeck (1902–68) American Novelist, Short Story Writer, Journalist
There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up the pen to write.
—William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–63) English Novelist
There is no luck in literary reputation. They who make up the final verdict upon every book are not the partial and noisy readers of the hour when it appears; but a court as of angels, a public not to be bribed, not to be entreated, and not to be overawed, decides upon every man’s title to fame.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
Writers like teeth are divided into incisors and grinders.
—Walter Bagehot (1826–77) English Economist, Journalist
It is quite as much of a trade to make a book, as to make a clock.—It requires more than mere genius to be an author.
—Jean de La Bruyere (1645–96) French Satiric Moralist, Author
One should not be too severe on English novels; they are the only relaxation of the intellectually unemployed.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof, shit detector. This is the writer’s radar and all great writers have had it.
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American Author, Journalist, Short Story Writer
A great writer creates a world of his own and his readers are proud to live in it. A lesser writer may entice them in for a moment, but soon he will watch them filing out.
—Cyril Connolly (1903–74) British Literary Critic, Writer
I’m simply the happiest, the placidest, when I’m writing, and so I suppose that that, for me, is the final answer. … It’s fine therapy for people who are perpetually scared of nameless threats as I am most of the time.
—William Styron (1925–2006) American Novelist, Essayist, Writer
In my writing I am acting as a map maker, an explorer of psychic areas… a cosmonaut of inner space, and I see no point in exploring areas that have already been thoroughly surveyed.
—William S. Burroughs (1914–97) American Novelist, Poet, Short Story Writer, Painter
The task of an American writer is not to describe the misgivings of a woman taken in adultery as she looks out of a window at the rain but to describe four hundred people under the lights reaching for a foul ball. This is ceremony.
—John Cheever (1912–82) American Novelist, Short-story Writer
All a writer has to do to get a woman is to say he’s a writer. It’s an aphrodisiac.
—Saul Bellow (1915–2005) Canadian-American Novelist
It’s very hard to be a gentleman and a writer.
—W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) British Novelist, Short-Story Writer, Playwright
If I had not existed, someone else would have written me, Hemingway, Dostoevsky, all of us.
—William Faulkner (1897–1962) American Novelist