You must not suppose, because I am a man of letters, that I never tried to earn an honest living.
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish Playwright
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
Drama, instead of telling us the whole of a man’s life, must place him in such a situation, tie such a knot, that when it is untied, the whole man is visible.
—Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian Novelist
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
Metaphors have a way of holding the most truth in the least space.
—Orson Scott Card (b.1951) American Author
The best time for planning a book is while you’re doing the dishes.
—Agatha Christie (1890–1976) British Novelist, Short-Story Writer, Playwright
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
I am a man, and alive…. For this reason I am a novelist. And being a novelist, I consider myself superior to the saint, the scientist, the philosopher, and the poet, who are all great masters of different bits of man alive, but never get the whole hog.
—D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) English Novelist, Playwright, Poet, Essayist, Literary Critic
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 responsibility of a writer is to excavate the experience of the people who produced him.
—James Baldwin (1924–87) American Novelist, Social Critic
Do not put statements in the negative form. And don’t start sentences with a conjunction. If you reread your work, you will find on rereading that a great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing. Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do. Unqualified superlatives are the worst of all. De-accession euphemisms. If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is. Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky. Last, but not least, avoid cliches like the plague.
—William Safire (1929–2009) American Columnist, Journalist, Author, Speechwriter
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
You expect far too much of a first sentence. Think of it as analogous to a good country breakfast: what we want is something simple, but nourishing to the imagination. Hold the philosophy, hold the adjectives, just give us a plain subject and verb and perhaps a wholesome, nonfattening adverb or two.
—Larry McMurtry (b.1936) American Novelist, Screenwriter
If you wish to be a writer; write!
—Epictetus (55–135) Ancient Greek Philosopher
Real writers-that is, capital W Writers-rarely make much money. Their biggest reward is the occasional reader’s response…. Commentators-in-print voicing big fat opinions-you might call us small w writers-get considerably more feedback than Writers. The letters I personally find most flattering are not the very rare ones that speak well of my editorials, but the occasional reader who wants to know who writes them. I always happily assume the letter-writers is implying that the editorials are so good that I couldn’t have written them myself.
—Malcolm S. Forbes (1919–1990) American Publisher, Businessperson
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
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 first essential in writing about anything is that the writer should have no experience of the matter.
—Isadora Duncan (1877–1927) American Dancer, Choreographer
We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American Author, Journalist, Short Story Writer
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
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
A critic can only review the book he has read, not the one which the writer wrote.
—Mignon McLaughlin (1913–83) American Journalist, Author
If you want to be a writer-stop talking about it and sit down and write!
—Jackie Collins (1937–2015) English Romance Novelist
The greatest part of a writer’s time is spent in reading, in order to write; a man will turn over half a library to make one book.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
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 pen, no ink, no table, no room, no time, no quiet, no inclination.
—James Joyce (1882–1941) Irish Novelist, Poet
An editor is someone who separates the wheat from the chaff and then prints the chaff.
—Adlai Stevenson (1900–65) American Diplomat, Politician, Orator
A serious writer is not to be confounded with a solemn writer. A serious writer may be a hawk or a buzzard or even a popinjay, but a solemn writer is always a bloody owl.
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American Author, Journalist, Short Story Writer
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
He is outside of everything, and alien everywhere. He is an aesthetic solitary. His beautiful, light imagination is the wing that on the autumn evening just brushes the dusky window.
—Henry James (1843–1916) American-born British Novelist, 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
Walter Scott has no business to write novels, especially good ones. He has fame and profit enough as a poet, and should not be taking the bread out of other people’s mouths.
—Jane Austen (1775–1817) English Novelist
I was gravely warned by some of my female acquaintances that no woman could expect to be regarded as a lady after she had written a book.
—Lydia Maria Child (1802–80) American Abolitionist, Writer
The writer’s only responsibility is to his art. He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one. He has a dream. Everything goes by the board: honor, pride, decency, security, happiness, all, to get the book written. If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the “Ode on a Grecian Urn” is worth any number of old ladies.
—William Faulkner (1897–1962) American Novelist
A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t quit.
—Richard Bach (b.1936) American Novelist, Aviator
The only way to become a better writer is to become a better person.
—Brenda Ueland (1891–1985) American Journalist, Editor, Writer, Teacher
Writing crystallizes thought and thought produces action.
—Paul J. Meyer
Your manuscript is both good and original, but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
If writing seems hard, it’s because it is hard. It’s one of the hardest things people do.
—William Zinsser (1922–2015) American Writer, Editor, Literary Critic, Teacher
The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter—’tis the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
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
Personal & Confidential. Letters so marked should be. When the contents are only printed matter, though, the minifrauder succeeds in sowing illwill & ire.
—Malcolm S. Forbes (1919–1990) American Publisher, Businessperson
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
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
The maker of a sentence launches out into the infinite and builds a road into Chaos and old Night, and is followed by those who hear him with something of wild, creative delight.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
A man would do well to carry a pencil in his pocket and write down the thoughts of the moment. Those that come unsought for are commonly the most valuable, and should be secured, because they seldom return.
—Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English Philosopher
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 never know what I think about something until I read what I’ve written on it.
—William Faulkner (1897–1962) American Novelist
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
Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, then it becomes a master, then it becomes a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster, and fling him to the public.
—Winston Churchill (1874–1965) British Head of State, Political leader, Historian, Journalist, Author