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
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
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
Writing is simple. First you have to make sure you have plenty of paper… sharp pencils… typewriter ribbon. Then put your belly up to your desk… roll a sheet of paper into the typewriter… and stare at it until beads of blood appear on your forehead.
—Indian Proverb
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
Writing is a question of finding a certain rhythm. I compare it to the rhythms of jazz. Much of the time life is a sort of rhythmic progression of three characters. If one tells oneself that life is like that, one feels it less arbitrary.
—Francoise Sagan (1935–2004) French Novelist, Playwright, Short-Story Writer
I know not, Madam, that you have a right, upon moral principles, to make your readers suffer so much.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
A real writer learns from earlier writers the way a boy learns from an apple orchard-by stealing what he has a taste for and can carry off.
—Archibald MacLeish (1892–1982) American Poet, Dramatist
Every secret of a writer’s soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written large in his works.
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English Novelist
Writing is to descend like a miner to the depths of the mine with a lamp on your forehead, a light whose dubious brightness falsifies everything, whose wick is in permanent danger of explosion, whose blinking illumination in the coal dust exhausts and corrodes your eyes.
—Blaise Cendrars (1887–1961) Swiss Novelist, Poet, Essayist
The writer is committed when he plunges to the very depths of himself with the intent to disclose, not his individuality, but his person in the complex society that conditions and supports him.
—Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–80) French Philosopher, Playwright, Novelist, Screenwriter, Political Activist
As to the adjective, when in doubt strike it out.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
Most writers regard truth as their most valuable possession, and therefore are most economical in it use.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
Analogies, it is true, decide nothing, but they can make one feel more at home.
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian Psychiatrist, Psychoanalytic
Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing.
—Norman Mailer (1923–2007) American Novelist Essayist
Practically everybody in New York has half a mind to write a book, and does.
—Groucho Marx (1890–1977) American Actor, Comedian, Singer
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
The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true.
—John Steinbeck (1902–68) American Novelist, Short Story Writer, Journalist
All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.
—Unknown
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
An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the school-masters of ever afterward.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American Novelist
I am always at a loss at how much to believe of my own stories.
—Washington Irving (1783–1859) American Essayist, Biographer, Historian
Ten censure wrong, for one that writes amiss.
—Alexander Pope (1688–1744) English Poet
It is excellent discipline for an author to feel that he must say all that he has to say in the fewest possible words, or his readers is sure to skip them.
—John Ruskin (1819–1900) English Writer, Art Critic
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
Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about.
—W. H. Auden (1907–73) British-born American Poet, Dramatist
The need to express oneself in writing springs from a mal-adjustment to life, or from an inner conflict which the adolescent (or the grown man) cannot resolve in action. Those to whom action comes as easily as breathing rarely feel the need to break loose from the real, to rise above, and describe it… I do not mean that it is enough to be maladjusted to become a great writer, but writing is, for some, a method of resolving a conflict, provided they have the necessary talent.
—Andre Maurois (1885–1967) French Novelist, Biographer
Style and Structure are the essence of a book; great ideas are hogwash.
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) Russian-born American Novelist
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 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
For a creative writer possession of the “truth” is less important than emotional sincerity.
—George Orwell (1903–50) English Novelist, Journalist
For a long time now I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can.
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American Author, Journalist, Short Story Writer
Habits in writing as in life are only useful if they are broken as soon as they cease to be advantageous.
—W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) British Novelist, Short-Story Writer, Playwright
There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.
—W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) British Novelist, Short-Story Writer, Playwright
The aim, if reached or not, makes great the life: try to be Shakespeare, leave the rest to fate!
—Robert Browning (1812–89) English Poet
Nothing so fretful, so despicable as a Scribbler, see what I am, and what a parcel of Scoundrels I have brought about my ears, and what language I have been obliged to treat them with to deal with them in their own way;—all this comes of Authorship.
—Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) (1788–1824) English Romantic Poet
O Grub Street! how do I bemoan thee, whose graceless children scorn to own thee! . Yet thou hast greater cause to be ashamed of them, than they of thee.
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) Irish Satirist
Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar.
—E. B. White (1985–99) American Essayist, Humorist
The responsibility of a writer is to excavate the experience of the people who produced him.
—James Baldwin (1924–87) American Novelist, Social Critic
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
In all pointed sentences, some degree of accuracy must be sacrificed to conciseness.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
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
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
Employ your time in improving yourself by other men’s writings so that you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for.
—Socrates (469BCE–399BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher
Whores and writers, Mahound. We are the people you can’t forgive.
—Salman Rushdie (b.1947) Indian-born British Novelist
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 only phenomenon with which writing has always been concomitant is the creation of cities and empires, that is the integration of large numbers of individuals into a political system, and their grading into castes or classes. It seems to have favored the exploitation of human beings rather than their enlightenment.
—Claude Levi-Strauss (1908–2009) French Social Anthropologist, Philosopher
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
Our work is to present things that are as they are.
—Frederick II of Prussia (1712–86) Prussian Monarch
Style may defined as the proper words in the proper places.
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) Irish Satirist