All I could do was to offer you an opinion upon one minor point
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English Novelist
Great authors are admirable in this respect: in every generation they make for disagreement. Through them we become aware of our differences.
—Andre Gide (1869–1951) French Novelist
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
Every author in some degree portrays himself in his works, even if it be against his will.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German Poet
Thus, with child to speak, and helpless in my throes, biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite: Fool! said my muse to me, look in thy heart, and write.
—Philip Sidney (1554–86) English Soldier Poet, Courtier
True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, as those move easiest who have learned to dance. ‘Tis not enough no harshness gives offence. The sound must seem an echo to the sense.
—Alexander Pope (1688–1744) English Poet
Nothing written for pay is worth printing. Only what has been written against the market.
—Ezra Pound (1885-1972) American Poet, Translator, Critic
I get a fine warm feeling when I’m doing well, but that pleasure is pretty much negated by the pain of getting started each day. Let’s face it, writing is hell.
—William Styron (1925–2006) American Novelist, Essayist
No pen, no ink, no table, no room, no time, no quiet, no inclination.
—James Joyce (1882–1941) Irish Novelist, Poet
Rereading this novel today, replaying the moves of its plot, I feel rather like Anderssen fondly recalling his sacrifice of both Rooks to the unfortunate and noble Kieseritsky.
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) Russian-born American Novelist
The discipline of the written word punishes both stupidity and dishonesty.
—John Steinbeck (1902–68) American Novelist, Short Story Writer, Journalist
Write without pay until somebody offers to pay you. If nobody offers within three years, sawing wood is what you were intended for.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
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 (1949–2023) British Novelist, Journalist
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
The really great novel tends to be the exact negative of its author’s life.
—Andre Maurois (1885–1967) French Novelist, Biographer
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
The circumstance which gives authors an advantage above all these great masters, is this, that they can multiply their originals; or rather, can make copies of their works, to what number they please, which shall be as valuable as the originals themselves.
—Joseph Addison (1672–1719) English Essayist, Poet, Playwright, Politician
I think of an author as somebody who goes into the marketplace and puts down his rug and says, “I will tell you a story,” and then he passes the hat.
—Robertson Davies (1913–95) Canadian Novelist, Playwright, Essayist
Kerouac and I are not real at all. The only thing about a writer is that he has written, and not his so-called life. ‘And we (will) all die and the stars will go out, one after another.’
—William S. Burroughs (1914–97) American Novelist, Poet, Short Story Writer, Painter
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
Rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm.
—Joseph Addison (1672–1719) English Essayist, Poet, Playwright, Politician
We live in a world ruled by fictions of every kind—mass merchandising, advertising, politics conducted as a branch of advertising, the instant translation of science and technology into popular imagery, the increasing blurring and intermingling of identities within the realm of consumer goods, the preempting of any free or original imaginative response to experience by the television screen. We live inside an enormous novel. For the writer in particular it is less and less necessary for him to invent the fictional content of his novel. The fiction is already there. The writer’s task is to invent the reality.
—J. G. Ballard (1930–2009) English Novelist, Short Story Writer
Would you not like to try all sorts of lives—one is so very small—but that is the satisfaction of writing—one can impersonate so many people.
—Katherine Mansfield (1888–1923) New Zealand-born British Author
Let me tell you what a writer is. A writer takes comprehensive views, holds large convictions, makes wide generalizations. A writer’s not English, Mexican, or American. A writer’s not a woman nor a man. A writer’s not Christian, Jew, Buddhist, Muslim, nor snake worshipper. To local standards of right and wrong a writer’s civilly indifferent. In the virtues, a writer’s concerned only with general expediency. A writer doesn’t waste time focusing on fixed moral principles that aren’t yet before the court of conscience. Happiness discloses itself to a writer as the end and purpose of life, and art and love are the only means to a writer’s happiness. A writer is free of all doctrines, theories, etiquettes, and politics. To a writer, a continent doesn’t seem long, nor a century wide. And a writer has ever present consciousness that this is a world of…fools and rogues, blind with superstition, tormented with envy, consumed with vanity, selfish, false, cruel, cursed with illusions, and frothing mad.
—Ambrose Bierce (1842–1913) American Short-story Writer, Journalist
The art of writing is mysterious; the opinions we hold are ephemeral , and I prefer the Platonic idea of the Muse to that of Poe, who reasoned, or feigned to reason, that the writing of a poem is an act of the intelligence. It never fails to amaze me that the classics hold a romantic theory of poetry, and a romantic poet a classical theory.
—Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine Writer, Essayist, Poet
What I have crossed out I didn’t like. What I haven’t crossed out I’m dissatisfied with.
—Cecil B. DeMille (1881–1959) American Film Producer, Director
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
A perfectly healthy sentence, it is true, is extremely rare. For the most part we miss the hue and fragrance of the thought; as if we could be satisfied with the dews of the morning or evening without their colors, or the heavens without their azure.
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) American Philosopher
A man writes to throw off the poison which he has accumulated because of his false way of life. He is trying to recapture his innocence, yet all he succeeds in doing (by writing) is to inoculate the world with a virus of his disillusionment. No man would set a word down on paper if he had the courage to live out what he believed in.
—Henry Miller (1891–1980) American Novelist
All the world knows me in my book, and may book in me.
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–92) French Essayist
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