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Writing Proverbs

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


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