Sayings about Writers & Writing
Never write a letter while you are angry. ~ Chinese Proverb
You cannot write down a meaningful silence. ~ Italian Proverbs
Write injuries in sand, kindnesses in marble. ~ French Proverb
Even the best writer has to erase. ~ Spanish Proverb
Who writes love letters grows thin; who carries them, fat. ~ Dutch Proverbs
He who writes love letters must have clammy hands. ~ German Proverbs
Unread books make hollow minds. ~ Chinese Proverb
God writes straight even on wavy lines. ~ Brazilian Proverb
The first love letters are written with the eyes. ~ French Proverb
Think much, say little, write less. ~ French Proverb
Whatever is written on the forehead is always seen. ~ Palestinian Proverbs
You cannot write in the chimney with charcoal. ~ Russian Proverbs
If your books are not read, your descendants will be ignorant. ~ Chinese Proverb
Whoever writes a book, should be ready to accept criticism. ~ Iraqi Proverbs
Write down the advice of him who love you, though you like it not at present. ~ English Proverbs
The word that is heard perishes, but the letter that is written remains. ~ Traditional Proverb
Better to write down something one time than to read something ten times. ~ Japanese Proverbs
God writes on crooked lines. ~ South American Proverb
Quotations about Writers & Writing
Life cannot defeat a writer who is in love with writing; for life itself is a writer’s love until death. ~ Edna Ferber
Yes, it’s hard to write, but it’s harder not to. ~ Carl Van Doren
Good sense is both the first principle and the parent source of good writing. ~ Horace
The writing of the wise are the only riches our posterity cannot squander. ~ Walter Savage Landor
I don’t give a damn what other people think. It’s entirely their own business. I’m not writing for other people. ~ Harold Pinter
You must often make erasures if you mean to write what is worthy of being read a second time; and don’t labor for the admiration of the crowd, but be content with a few choice readers. ~ Horace
The writer must write what he has to say, not speak it. ~ Ernest Hemingway
Habits in writing as in life are only useful if they are broken as soon as they cease to be advantageous. ~ W. Somerset Maugham
Write books only if you are going to say in them the things you would never dare confide to anyone. ~ Emil Cioran
The best way to become a successful writer is to read good writing, remember it, and then forget where you remember it from. ~ Gene Fowler
There are two kinds of writers; the great ones who can give you truths, and the lessor ones, who can only give you themselves. ~ Cliff Fadiman
When you finish one book, you don’t want to just write the same book again. ~ Jeffrey Eugenides
Creative writers are always greater than the causes that they represent. ~ Edward M. Forster
Practically everybody in New York has half a mind to write a book, and does. ~ Groucho Marx
Writing a novel without being asked seems a bit like having a baby when you have nowhere to live. ~ Lucy Ellman
Writing is a dreadful labor, yet not so dreadful as Idleness. ~ Thomas Carlyle
There’s no such thing as perfect writing, just like there’s no such thing as perfect despair. ~ Huraki Murakami
Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers. ~ T. S. Eliot
Writers are the main landmarks of the past. ~ Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton
There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately no one knows what they are. ~ W. Somerset Maugham
It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn’t give it up, because by that time I was too famous. ~ Robert Benchley
If any man wishes to write a clear style, let him first be clear in his thoughts. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe Quotes
A writer should be a joyous optimist. Anything that implies rejection of life is wrong for a writer. ~ George Gribbon
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
I have no taste for either poverty or honest labor, so writing is the only recourse left for me. ~ Hunter S. Thompson
The first essential in writing about anything is that the writer should have no experience of the matter. ~ Isadora Duncan
It’s very hard to be a gentleman and a writer. ~ W. Somerset Maugham
The writer should never be ashamed of staring. There is nothing that does not require his attention. ~ Flannery O’Connor
To write what is worth publishing, to find honest people to publish it, and get sensible people to read it, are the three great difficulties in being an author. ~ Charles Caleb Colton
Great writers are the saints for the godless. ~ Anita Brookner
A great writer creates a world of his own and his readers are proud to live in it. A lesser writer may entice them in for a moment, but soon he will watch them filing out. ~ Cyril Connolly
The public takes from a writer, or a writing, what it needs and lets the remainder go. but what they take is usually what they need least and what they let go is what they need most. ~ Charles Bukowski
I believe that it is my job not only to write books but to have them published. A book is like a child. You have to defend the life of a child. ~ George Konrad
I can write better than anybody who can write faster, and I can write faster than anybody who can write better. ~ Abbott Joseph Liebling
About the most originality that any writer can hope to achieve honestly is to steal with good judgment. ~ Josh Billings
Writers like teeth are divided into incisors and grinders. ~ Walter Bagehot
A writer is someone who can make a riddle out of an answer. ~ Karl Kraus
A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t quit. ~ Richard Bach
Often I think writing is a sheer paring away of oneself leaving always something thinner, barer and more meager. ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald
The secret of all good writing is sound judgment. ~ Horace
To write is a humiliation. ~ Edward Dahlberg
The free-lance writer is a man who is paid per piece or per word or perhaps. ~ Robert Benchley
The biggest obstacle to professional writing is the necessity for changing a typewriter ribbon. ~ Robert Benchley
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
I, even now, persist in believing that these black marks on white paper bear the greatest significance, that if I keep writing I might be able to catch the rainbow of consciousness in a jar. ~ Jeffrey Eugenides
All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath. ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald
Writing is conscience, scruple, and the farming of our ancestors. ~ Edward Dahlberg
To write well, express yourself like common people but think like a wise man. Or, think as wise men do, but speak as the common people do. ~ Aristotle Quotes
Every writer “creates” his own precursors. His work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify the future. ~ Jorge Luis Borges
Writers are always selling somebody out. ~ Joan Didion
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
The responsibility of a writer is to excavate the experience of the people who produced him. ~ James Baldwin
We do not write in order to be understood; we write in order to understand. ~ Cecil Day Lewis
The trouble with young writers is that they are all in their sixties. ~ W. Somerset Maugham
Writing is the incurable itch that possesses many. ~ (Decimus Junius Juvenalis) Juvenal
I hold any writer sufficiently justified who is himself in love with his theme. ~ Henry James
An excellent precept for writers: Have a clear idea of all the phrases and expressions you need, and you will find them. ~ Ximenes Doudan
Writing is learning to say nothing, more cleverly each day. ~ William Allingham
They’re fancy talkers about themselves, writers. If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don’t listen to writers talking about writing or themselves. ~ Lillian Hellman
I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can. ~ Ernest Hemingway
The secret of good writing is to say an old thing in a new way or to say a new thing in an old way. ~ Richard Harding Davis
Nowadays three witty turns of phrase and a lie make a writer. ~ Georg C. Lichtenberg
I never think when I write. Nobody can do two things at the same time and do them well. ~ Don Marquis
The process of writing has something infinite about it. Even though it is interrupted each night, it is one single notation. ~ Elias Canetti
It is because we have had such great writers in the past that a writer is driven far out past where he can go, out to where no one can help him. ~ Ernest Hemingway
The writer is more concerned to know than to judge. ~W. Somerset Maugham
When you’re telling a story, you’ve got to give details. ~ Gao Xingjian
The writer may very well serve a movement of history as its mouthpiece, but he cannot of course create it. ~ Karl Marx
Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing. ~ Norman Mailer
Let authors write for glory and reward. The truth is well paid when she is sung and heard. ~ James J. Corbett
It requires more than mere genius to be an author. ~ Jean De La Bruyere
Once writing has become your major vice and greatest pleasure only death can stop it.~ Ernest Hemingway
When a good writer is having fun, the audience is almost always having fun too. ~ Stephen King
If you want to be a writer-stop talking about it and sit down and write! ~ Jackie Collins
Why do writers write? Because it isn’t there. ~ Thomas Berger
Never write anything that does not give you great pleasure. Emotion is easily transferred from the writer to the reader. ~ Joseph Joubert
The writer’s language is to some degree the product of his own action; he is both the historian and the agent of his own language. ~ Paul De Man
You who write, choose a subject suited to your abilities and think long and hard on what your powers are equal to and what they are unable to perform. ~ Horace
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
There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed. ~ Ernest Hemingway Quotes
A writer and nothing else; a man alone in a room with the English language, trying to get human feelings right. ~ John K. Hutchens
He who cannot limit himself will never know how to write. ~ Nicholas Boileau
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
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
I like to write when I feel spiteful. It is like having a good sneeze. ~ D. H. Lawrence
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
Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead. ~ Gene Fowler
You don’t write because you want to say something; you write because you’ve got something to say. ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald
It’s hard enough to write a good drama, it’s much harder to write a good comedy, and it’s hardest of all to write a drama with comedy. Which is what life is. ~ Jack Lemmon
Writing is turning one’s worst moments into money. ~ J. P. Donleavy
Writers should be read but not seen. Rarely are they a winsome sight. ~ Edna Ferber
Any writer, I suppose, feels that the world into which he was born is nothing less than a conspiracy against the cultivation of his talent. ~ James Baldwin
