No author dislikes to be edited as much as he dislikes not to be published.
—Russell Lynes (1910–91) American Art Historian, Photographer, Author, Editor
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
There’s only one person who needs a glass of water oftener than a small child tucked in for the night, and that’s a writer sitting down to write.
—Mignon McLaughlin (1913–83) American Journalist, Author
All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them.
—Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen) (1885–1962) Danish Novelist, Short-story Writer
The moving finger writes, and having written moves on. Nor all thy piety nor all thy wit, can cancel half a line of it.
—Omar Khayyam (1048–1123) Persian Mathematician
Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression. The chasm is never completely bridged. We all have the conviction, perhaps illusory, that we have much more to say than appears on the paper.
—Isaac Bashevis Singer (1902–91) Polish-born American Children’s Books Writer, Novelist, Short Story Writer
No one who cannot limit himself has ever been able to write.
—Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux (1636–1711) French Poet, Satirist, Literary Critic
Writing is utter solitude, the descent into the cold abyss of oneself.
—Franz Kafka (1883–1924) Austrian Novelist, Short Story Writer
I am always interested in why young people become writers, and from talking with many I have concluded that most do not want to be writers working eight and ten hours a day and accomplishing little; they want to have been writers, garnering the rewards of having completed a best-seller. They aspire to the rewards of writing but not to the travail.
—James A. Michener (1907–97) American Novelist, Short Story Writer, Historian
The trouble began with Forster. After him it was considered ungentlemanly to write more than five or six novels.
—Anthony Burgess (1917–93) English Novelist, Critic, Composer
Most bad books get that way because their authors are engaged in trying to justify themselves. If a vain author is an alcoholic, then the most sympathetically portrayed character in his book will be an alcoholic. This sort of thing is very boring for outsiders.
—Stephen Vizinczey (b.1933) Hungarian-born Canadian Novelist, Literary Critic, Author
I’m not a very good writer, but I’m an excellent rewriter.
—James A. Michener (1907–97) American Novelist, Short Story Writer, Historian
Every word born of an inner necessity – writing must never be anything else.
—Etty Hillesum (1914–43) Dutch Diarist, Holocaust Victim
In literature, as in love, we are astonished at the choice made by other people.
—Andre Maurois (1885–1967) French Novelist, Biographer
Not being boring is quite a challenge.
—Ian McEwan British Novelist, Short-Story Writer
A critic can only review the book he has read, not the one which the writer wrote.
—Mignon McLaughlin (1913–83) American Journalist, Author
Every drop of ink in my pen ran cold.
—Hugh Walpole (1884–1941) English Novelist, Short Story Writer, Dramatist
I’ve always believed in writing without a collaborator, because when two people are writing the same book, each believes he gets all the worries and only half the royalties.
—Agatha Christie (1890–1976) British Novelist, Short-Story Writer, Playwright
An editor should tell the author his writing is better than it is. Not a lot better, a little better.
—T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) American-born British Poet, Dramatist, Literary Critic
Everywhere I go I’m asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don’t stifle enough of them. There’s many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.
—Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964) American Novelist
The writer who loses his self-doubt, who gives way as he grows old to a sudden euphoria, to prolixity, should stop writing immediately: the time has come for him to lay aside his pen.
—Colette (1873–1954) French Novelist, Performer
The writer isn’t made in a vacuum. Writers are witnesses. The reason we need writers is because we need witnesses to this terrifying century.
—E. L. Doctorow (b.1931) American Writer, Editor, Academic
The expression “to write something down” suggests a descent of thought to the fingers whose movements immediately falsify it.
—William H. Gass (b.1924) American Short Story Writer, Novelist, Essayist, Literary Critic
Everything which I have created as a poet has had its origin in a frame of mind and a situation in life; I never wrote because I had, as they say, found a good subject.
—Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906) Norwegian Playwright
Many writers who choose to be active in the world lose not virtue but time, and that stillness without which literature cannot be made.
—Gore Vidal (1925–48) American Novelist, Essayist, Journalist, Playwright
I write fiction and I’m told it’s autobiography, I write autobiography and I’m told it’s fiction, so since I’m so dim and they’re so smart, let them decide what it is or it isn’t.
—Philip Roth (1933–2018) American Novelist, Short-story Writer
The future author is one who discovers that language, the exploration and manipulation of the resources of language, will serve him in winning through to his way.
—Thornton Wilder (1897–1975) American Novelist, Playwright
If you want to be a writer-stop talking about it and sit down and write!
—Jackie Collins (1937–2015) English Romance Novelist
If there’s a book you really want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.
—Toni Morrison (1931–2019) American Novelist, Editor, Academic
Authors and lovers always suffer some infatuation, from which only absence can set them free.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
If, at the close of business each evening, I myself can understand what I’ve written, I feel the day hasn’t been totally wasted.
—S. J. Perelman (1904–79) American Humorist, Author, Screenwriter
In most cases a favorite writer is more with us in his book than he ever could have been in the flesh; since, being a writer, he is one who has studied and perfected this particular mode of personal incarnation, very likely to the detriment of any other. I should like as a matter of curiosity to see and hear for a moment the men whose works I admire; but I should hardly expect to find further intercourse particularly profitable.
—Charles Cooley (1864–1929) American Sociologist
A story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end… but not necessarily in that order.
—Jean-luc Godard (b.1930) French-born Swiss Film Director, Film Critic
For me, a page of good prose is where one hears the rain (and) the noise of battle.
—John Cheever (1912–82) American Novelist, Short-story Writer
I learned that you should feel when writing, not like Lord Byron on a mountain top, but like child stringing beads in kindergarten, – happy, absorbed and quietly putting one bead on after another.
—Brenda Ueland (1891–1985) American Journalist, Editor, Writer, Teacher
I suppose I am a born novelist, for the things I imagine are more vital and vivid to me than the things I remember.
—Ellen Glasgow (1873–1945) American Novelist
I’m the kind of writer that people think other people are reading.
—V. S. Naipaul (1932–2018) Trinidadian-British Novelist, Short-story Writer
If I were authorized to address any word directly to our novelists, I should say: Do not trouble yourself about standards or ideals, but try to be faithful and natural.
—William Dean Howells (1837–1920) American Novelist, Critic.
Could we with ink the ocean fill,
And were the skies of parchment made,
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade,
To write the love of God above,
Would drain the oceans dry.
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky.
—Frederick Martin Lehman
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
A word is a bud attempting to become a twig. How can one not dream while writing? It is the pen which dreams. The blank page gives the right to dream.
—Gaston Bachelard (1884–1962) French Philosopher, Psychoanalyst, Poet
Although most of us know Vincent van Gogh in Arles and Paul Gauguin in Tahiti as if they were neighbors — somewhat disreputable but endlessly fascinating — none of us can name two French generals or department store owners of that period. I take enormous pride in considering myself an artist, one of the necessaries.
—James A. Michener (1907–97) American Novelist, Short Story Writer, Historian
If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn’t brood. I’d type a little faster.
—Isaac Asimov (1920–92) Russian-born American Writer, Scientist
When once the itch of literature comes over a man, nothing can cure it but the scratching of a pen. But if you have not a pen, I suppose you must scratch any way you can.
—Samuel Lover (1797–1868) Anglo-Irish Writer, Artist, Songwriter
The only way to become a better writer is to become a better person.
—Brenda Ueland (1891–1985) American Journalist, Editor, Writer, Teacher
Never write on a subject until you have read yourself full of it.
—Jean Paul (1763–1825) German Novelist, Humorist
Don’t write merely to be understood. Write so that you cannot possibly be misunderstood.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–94) Scottish Novelist
Every writer hopes or boldly assumes that his life is in some sense exemplary, that the particular will turn out to be universal.
—Martin Amis (b.1949) British Novelist, Journalist
The most poignantly personal autobiography of a biographer is the biography he has written of another man.
—George Jean Nathan (1882–1958) American Drama Critic, Editor
They can’t yank a novelist like they can a pitcher. A novelist has to go the full nine, even if it kills him.
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American Author, Journalist, Short Story Writer
To write is to make oneself the echo of what cannot cease speaking — and since it cannot, in order to become its echo I have, in a way, to silence it. I bring to this incessant speech the decisiveness, the authority of my own silence.
—Maurice Blanchot (1907–2003) French Novelist, Critic
The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies.
—Ray Bradbury (b.1920) American Novelist, Short Story Writer
I would love to spend all my time writing to you; I’d love to share with you all that goes through my mind, all that weighs on my heart, all that gives air to my soul; phantoms of art, dreams that would be so beautiful if they could come true.
—Luigi Pirandello (1867–1936) Italian Dramatist, Novelist, Short Story Writer, Author
The writer does the most good who gives his reader the most knowledge and takes from him the least time.
—Sydney Smith (1771–1845) English Clergyman, Essayist, Wit
Many books require no thought from those who read them, and for a very simple reason: they made no such demand upon those who wrote them. Those works, therefore, are the most valuable, that set our thinking faculties in the fullest operation. understand them.
—Charles Caleb Colton (c.1780–1832) English Clergyman, Aphorist
Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.
—E. L. Doctorow (b.1931) American Writer, Editor, Academic
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
Writing is the only way to talk without being interrupted.
—Jules Renard (1864–1910) French Writer, Diarist
A good writer is basically a story-teller, not a scholar or a redeemer of mankind.
—Isaac Bashevis Singer (1902–91) Polish-born American Children’s Books Writer, Novelist, Short Story Writer
For myself I live, live intensely and am fed by life, and my value, whatever it be, is in my own kind of expression of that.
—Henry James (1843–1916) American-born British Novelist, Writer
Omit needless words. Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.
—William Strunk, Jr. (1869–1946) American Writer, Academic
A writer never reads his work. For him, it is the unreadable, a secret, and he cannot remain face to face with it. A secret, because he is separated from it.
—Maurice Blanchot (1907–2003) French Novelist, Critic
I am persuaded that foolish writers and foolish readers are created for each other; and that fortune provides readers as she does mates for ugly women.
—Hugh Walpole (1884–1941) English Novelist, Short Story Writer, Dramatist
There are two kinds of writers—the great ones who can give you truths, and the lesser ones, who can only give you themselves.
—Clifton Fadiman (1904–99) American Author, Radio Personality
All speech, written or spoken, is a dead language, until it finds a willing and prepared hearer.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–94) Scottish Novelist
Really, in the end, the only thing that can make you a writer is the person that you are, the intensity of your feeling, the honesty of your vision, the unsentimental acknowledgment of the endless interest of the life around and within you. Virtually nobody can help you deliberately-many people will help you unintentionally.
—Santha Rama Rau (1923–2009) Indian-American Travel Writer
For the creation of a masterwork of literature two powers must concur, the power of the man and the power of the moment, and the man is not enough without the moment.
—Matthew Arnold (1822–88) English Poet, Critic
Writers must fortify themselves with pride and egotism as best they can. The process is analogous to using sandbags and loose timbers to protect a house against flood. Writers are vulnerable creatures like anyone else. For what do they have in reality? Not sandbags, not timbers. Just a flimsy reputation and a name.
—Brian Aldiss (1925–2017) British Novelist, Short-Story Writer
Manuscript: something submitted in haste and returned at leisure.
—Oliver Herford (1863–1935) American Writer, Artist, Illustrator
Justice to my readers compels me to admit that I write because I have nothing to do; justice to myself induces me to add that I will cease to write the moment I have nothing to say.
—Charles Caleb Colton (c.1780–1832) English Clergyman, Aphorist
Find out what your hero or heroine wants, and when he or she wakes up in the morning, just follow him or her all day.
—Ray Bradbury (b.1920) American Novelist, Short Story Writer
No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.
—Henry Adams (1838-1918) American Historian, Man Of Letters
By its very looseness, by its way of evoking rather than defining, suggesting rather than saying, English is a magnificent vehicle for emotional poetry.
—Max Beerbohm (1872–1956) British Essayist, Caricaturist, Novelist
An original writer is not one who imitates nobody, but one whom nobody can imitate.
—Francois-Rene de Chateaubriand (1768–1848) French Writer, Academician, Statesman
I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of hunger for life that gnaws in us all.
—Richard Wright (1908–1960) American Novelist, Short-Story Writer
You enter a state of controlled passivity, you relax your grip and accept that even if your declared intention is to justify the ways of God to man, you might end up interesting your readers rather more in Satan.
—Ian McEwan British Novelist, Short-Story Writer
I’d rather be a lightning rod than a seismograph.
—Ken Kesey (1935–2001) American Novelist, Essayist, Short Story Writer
Words are but the vague shadows of the volumes we mean. Little audible links, they are, chaining together great inaudible feelings and purposes.
—Theodore Dreiser (1871–1945) American Novelist, Journalist
The way Bernard Shaw believes in himself is very refreshing in these atheistic days when so many believe in no God at all.
—Israel Zangwill (1864–1926) English Playwright, Novelist, Zionist Activist
The first essential in writing about anything is that the writer should have no experience of the matter.
—Isadora Duncan (1877–1927) American Dancer, Choreographer
The only end of writing is to enable the readers better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
The spoken discourse may roll on strongly as the great tidal wave; but, like the wave, it dies at last feebly on the sands. It is heard by few, remembered by still fewer, and fades away, like an echo in the mountains, leaving no token of power. It is the written human speech, that gave power and permanence to human thought.
—Albert Pike (1809–91) American Masonic Scholar, Orator, Jurist
If you’re going to write, don’t pretend to write down. It’s going to be the best you can do, and it’s the fact that it’s the best you can do that kills you.
—Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American Humorist, Journalist
Good writing excites me, and makes life worth living.
—Harold Pinter (1930–2008) British Playwright
I was brought up in the great tradition of the late nineteenth century: that a writer never complains, never explains and never disdains.
—James A. Michener (1907–97) American Novelist, Short Story Writer, Historian
No pen, no ink, no table, no room, no time, no quiet, no inclination.
—James Joyce (1882–1941) Irish Novelist, Poet
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
No man should ever publish a book until he has first read it to a woman.
—Van Wyck Brooks (1886–1963) American Literary Critic, Biographer, Historian
The English language has a deceptive air of simplicity; so have some little frocks; but they are both not the kind of thing you can run up in half an hour with a machine.
—Dorothy L. Sayers (1893–1957) British Crime Writer
To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it’s about, but the inner music that words make.
—Truman Capote (1924–84) American Novelist
Having imagination, it takes you an hour to write a paragraph that, if you were unimaginative, would take you only a minute. Or you might not write the paragraph at all.
—Franklin P. Adams (1881–1960) American Columnist, Radio Personality, Author
Essential characteristic of the really great novelist: a Christ-like, all-embracing compassion.
—Arnold Bennett (1867–1931) British Novelist, Playwright, Critic
A writer is somebody for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955) German Novelist, Short Story Writer, Social Critic, Philanthropist, Essayist
The story I am writing exists, written in absolutely perfect fashion, some place, in the air. All I must do is find it, and copy it.
—Jules Renard (1864–1910) French Writer, Diarist
Creative writers are always greater than the causes that they represent.
—E. M. Forster (1879–1970) English Novelist, Short Story Writer, Essayist
I never know what I think about something until I read what I’ve written on it.
—William Faulkner (1897–1962) American Novelist
Practically everybody in New York has half a mind to write a book, and does.
—Groucho Marx (1890–1977) American Actor, Comedian, Singer
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
And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.
—Sylvia Plath (1932–63) American Poet, Novelist
A good style should show no signs of effort. What is written should seem a happy accident.
—W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) British Novelist, Short-Story Writer, Playwright
The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible.
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) Russian-born American Novelist
The hard necessity of bringing the judge on the bench down into the dock has been the peculiar responsibility of the writer in all ages of man.
—Nelson Algren (1909–81) American Novelist, Short Story Writer
Let us dare to read, think, speak and write.
—John Adams (1735–1826) American Head of State, Lawyer
Metaphors have a way of holding the most truth in the least space.
—Orson Scott Card (b.1951) American Author, Critic, Political Activist
Writing is the only profession where no one considers you ridiculous if you earn no money.
—Jules Renard (1864–1910) French Writer, Diarist
Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depth of your heart; confess to yourself you would have to die if you were forbidden to write.
—Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian Poet
I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions.
—James A. Michener (1907–97) American Novelist, Short Story Writer, Historian
Writing is like getting married. One should never commit oneself until one is amazed at one’s luck.
—Iris Murdoch (1919–99) British Novelist, Playwright, Philosopher
The style of an author should be the image of his mind, but the choice and command of language is the fruit of exercise.
—Edward Gibbon (1737–94) English Historian, Politician
The best time for planning a book is while you’re doing the dishes.
—Agatha Christie (1890–1976) British Novelist, Short-Story Writer, Playwright
An old racetrack joke reminds you that your program contains all the winners’ names. I stare at my typewriter keys with the same thought.
—Mignon McLaughlin (1913–83) American Journalist, Author
One must never judge the writer by the man; but one may fairly judge the man by the writer.
—Louis Kronenberger (1904–80) American Drama, Literary Critic
Writing ought either to be the manufacture of stories for which there is a market demand — a business as safe and commendable as making soap or breakfast foods — or it should be an art, which is always a search for something for which there is no market demand, something new and untried, where the values are intrinsic and have nothing to do with standardized values.
—Willa Cather (1873–1947) American Novelist, Writer
Good writers are those who keep the language efficient. That is to say, keep it accurate, keep it clear.
—Ezra Pound (1885-1972) American Poet, Translator, Critic
Like all writers, he measured the achievements of others by what they had accomplished, asking of them that they measure him by what he envisaged or planned.
—Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine Writer, Essayist, Poet
At its best, the sensation of writing is that of any unmerited grace. It is handed to you, but only if you look for it. You search, you break your heart, your back, your brain, and then–and only then–it is handed to you.
—Annie Dillard (b.1945) Essayist, Novelist, Poet, Naturalist, Mystic
Analogies, it is true, decide nothing, but they can make one feel more at home.
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian Psychiatrist, Psychoanalytic
It has always been my practice to cast a long paragraph in a single mould, to try it by my ear, to deposit it in my memory, but to suspend the action of the pen till I had given the last polish to my work.
—Edward Gibbon (1737–94) English Historian, Politician
Writers are not just people who sit down and write. They hazard themselves. Every time you compose a book your composition of yourself is at stake.
—E. L. Doctorow (b.1931) American Writer, Editor, Academic
Looking back, I imagine I was always writing. Twaddle it was too. But better far write twaddle or anything, anything, than nothing at all.
—Katherine Mansfield (1888–1923) New Zealand-born British Author
It has taken me years of struggle, hard work and research to learn to make one simple gesture, and I know enough about the art of writing to realize that it would take as many years of concentrated effort to write one simple, beautiful sentence.
—Isadora Duncan (1877–1927) American Dancer, Choreographer
Style and Structure are the essence of a book; great ideas are hogwash.
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) Russian-born American Novelist
Writing makes no noise, except groans, and it can be done everywhere, and it is done alone.
—Ursula K. Le Guin (b.1929) American Science fiction and fantasy writer