Analogies, it is true, decide nothing, but they can make one feel more at home.
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian Psychiatrist, Psychoanalytic
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
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
It’s very hard to be a gentleman and a writer.
—W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) British Novelist, Short-Story Writer, Playwright
One reason writers write is out of revenge. Life hurts; certain ideas and experiences hurt; one wants to clarify, to set out illuminations, to replay the old bad scenes and get the Treppenworte said—the words one didn’t have the strength or ripeness to say when those words were necessary for one’s dignity or survival.
—Cynthia Ozick (b.1928) American Novelist, Short-story Writer, Essayist
All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.
—Unknown
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, Writer
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
There is a difference between a book of two hundred pages from the very beginning, and a book of two hundred pages which is the result of an original eight hundred pages. The six hundred are there. Only you don’t see them.
—Elie Wiesel (b.1928) Romanian-born American Writer, Professor, Political Activist
I don’t like to be described as a Southern writer. The danger is, if you’re described as a Southern writer, you might be thought of as someone who writes about a picturesque local scene like Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Gone With the Wind, something like that.
—Walker Percy (1916–90) American Novelist
The only reason for being a professional writer is that you can’t help it.
—Leo Rosten (1908–97) Russian-born American Humorist, Teacher, Academic, Short Story Writer
Composition is, for the most part, an effort of slow diligence and steady perseverance, to which the mind is dragged by necessity or resolution, and from which the attention is every moment starting to more delightful amusements.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
You can never correct your work well until you have forgotten it.
—Voltaire (1694–1778) French Philosopher, Author
Novels are longer than life.
—Natalie Clifford Barney (1876–1972) American Playwright, Poet, Novelist
The role of the writer is not simply to arrange Being according to his own lights; he must also serve as a medium to Being and remain open to its often unfathomable dictates. This is the only way the work can transcend its creator and radiate its meaning further than the author himself can see or perceive.
—Vaclav Havel (1936–2011) Czech Dramatist, Statesman
Writers and politicians are natural rivals. Both groups try to make the world in their own images; they fight for the same territory.
—Salman Rushdie (b.1947) Indian-born British Novelist
For if the proper study of mankind is man, it is evidently more sensible to occupy yourself with the coherent, substantial and significant creatures of fiction than with the irrational and shadowy figures of real life.
—W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) British Novelist, Short-Story Writer, Playwright
I like to write when I feel spiteful. It is like having a good sneeze.
—D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) English Novelist, Playwright, Poet, Essayist, Literary Critic
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
Whores and writers, Mahound. We are the people you can’t forgive.
—Salman Rushdie (b.1947) Indian-born British Novelist
To endow the writer publicly with a good fleshly body, to reveal that he likes dry white wine and underdone steak, is to make even more miraculous for me, and of a more divine essence, the products of his art. Far from the details of his daily life bringing nearer to me the nature of his inspiration and making it clearer, it is the whole mystical singularity of his condition which the writer emphasizes by such confidences. For I cannot but ascribe to some superhumanly the existence of beings vast enough to wear blue pajamas at the very moment when they manifest themselves as universal conscience.
—Roland Barthes (1915–80) French Writer, Critic, Teacher
The last thing we decide in writing a book is what to put first.
—Blaise Pascal (1623–62) French Mathematician, Physicist, Theologian
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
Writing is thinking on paper.
—William Zinsser (1922–2015) American Writer, Editor, Literary Critic, Teacher
Nothing contributes to the entertainment of the reader more, than the change of times and the vicissitudes of fortune.
—Cicero (106BCE–43BCE) Roman Philosopher, Orator, Politician, Lawyer
The secret of popular writing is never to put more on a given page than the common reader can lap off it with no strain whatsoever on his habitually slack attention.
—Ezra Pound (1885-1972) American Poet, Translator, Critic
If writers were good businessmen, they’d have too much sense to be writers.
—Irvin S. Cobb (1876–1944) American Humorist, Short Story Writer, Columnist
The time-honored bread-sauce of the happy ending.
—Henry James (1843–1916) American-born British Novelist, Writer
There is but one art, to omit.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–94) Scottish Novelist
Writing is the incurable itch that possesses many.
—Juvenal (c.60–c.136 CE) Roman Poet
The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
Be born anywhere, little embryo novelist, but do not be born under the shadow of a great creed, not under the burden of original sin, not under the doom of Salvation.
—Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American Novelist, Human Rights Activist
I trust it will not be giving away professional secrets to say that many readers would be surprised, perhaps shocked, at the questions which some newspaper editors will put to a defenseless woman under the guise of flattery.
—Kate Chopin (1850–1904) American Novelist, Short-Story Writer
For five months I got up at six o’clock and got dressed by the lamplight. The fire would not yet be on. The house was very cold but I would put on a heavy coat, sit with my feet up to keep them from freezing and with fingers so cramped that I could scarcely hold a pen. I would write my stunt for the day. Sometimes it would be a poem in which I would carol blithely of blue skies and rippling brooks and flowery meads! Then I would thaw out my hands, eat breakfast and go to school. When people say to me, as they occasionally do, ‘Oh how I envy your gift, how I wish I could write as you do’, I am inclined to wonder, with some inward amusement, how much they would have envied me on those dark, cold, winter mornings of my apprenticeship.
—Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874–1942) Canadian Novelist
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
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
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
Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins committed in previous lives. The English reading public explains the reason why.
—James Joyce (1882–1941) Irish Novelist, Poet
People want to know why I do this, why I write such gross stuff. I like to tell them that I have the heart of a small boy—and I keep it in a jar on my desk.
—Stephen King (b.1947) American Novelist, Short-Story Writer, Screenwriter, Columnist, Film Director
So I have loitered my life away, reading books, looking at pictures, going to plays, hearing, thinking, writing on what pleased me best. I have wanted only one thing to make me happy, but wanting that have wanted everything.
—William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English Essayist
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
You don’t write because you want to say something; you write because you’ve got something to say.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American Novelist
A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t quit.
—Richard Bach (b.1936) American Novelist, Aviator
Only two classes of books are of universal appeal. The very best and the very worst.
—Ford Madox Ford (1873?1939) English Novelist, Poet, Critic
To withdraw myself from myself has ever been my sole, my entire, my sincere motive in scribbling at all.
—Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) (1788–1824) English Romantic Poet
The trouble with young writers is that they are all in their sixties.
—W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) British Novelist, Short-Story Writer, Playwright
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
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
But I hate things all fiction… there should always be some foundation of fact for the most airy fabric—and pure invention is but the talent of a liar.
—Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) (1788–1824) English Romantic Poet
Richard Bach with this book does two things. He gives meFlight. He makes me Young. For both I am deeply grateful.
—Ray Bradbury (b.1920) American Novelist, Short Story Writer