Writer Quotes

Nothing fills the world quite as poetry does. A poet need not dwell on the pagecount of his life.

~ D.a. Botta

Why do I write? Out of fear. Out of fear that the memory of the people I write about might go lost. Out of fear that the memory of myself might get lost. Or even just to be shielded by a story, to slip inside a story and stop being recognizable, controllable, subject to blackmail.

~ Fabrizio De André

And lucky indeed is the writer who has grown up in Ireland, for the English spoken there is so amusing and musical. (“How to Write with Style”. Essay, 1985)

~ Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

I haven't written in a week. It's like holding your breath under water. You feel an awful constriction and then the instinct to propel yourself.

~ D.a. Botta

...each person is required to ask, 'what is my authority?' - on what do you base your decisions? if it's yourself, then you are without excuse...

~ John Geddes

It is the writer who might catch the imagination of young people, and plant a seed that will flower and come to fruition.

~ Isaac Asimov

The actual writing would be easy. All he had to do was to transfer to paper the interminable restless monologue that had been running inside his head, literally for years.

~ George Orwell

The greatest artists express their inner self, an artist paints her rage, a writer pens his fear, a dancer expresses her sadness through movement, and a musician's loneliness echoes in his performance.

~ Gerard De Marigny

...what makes a writer a prophet is his ability to speak truth...

~ John Geddes

Writing consist of everything. whether your writing is of riddles, rimes, prose, trivial, general, of thought, or of feeling. indiscretions you've done or have fantasized about. love, deception, romance, fear, death, life, pain, & yes even happiness. writing is of a specific purpose & states a meaning within what is written.

~ Michael Stuckey

The serious writer was aware of a paradox at the heart of his art: his inner world, the place of the strongest stories, was infinite, but it was also embedded in – if this was possible! – an even more infinite universe of all things to write about. It was like seeing the Grand Canyon from outer space – a huge gorge that looked like a thin trickle, impossible to miss, hard to hit.

~ Marcus Speh

I may not be able to say these words to you but that doesn't mean I can't say it to the rest of the world. I'm not a poet. Nor do I try to be one. I simply share what I do in my spare time. All poetry springs from genuine feelings. I'm only a woman expressing herself to the world.

~ Tammy-Louise Wilkins

Sometimes you can write about a character's day in under a minute and sometimes it takes a day just to write about a minute.

~ Jennifer V. Clancy

...authority is the unmistakeable tone in the voice of a true writer...

~ John Geddes

I wasn't that good you know. What I was was a guy who could write a little, publishing in magazines surrounded by people who couldn't write at all. So I looked pretty good. But I never thought I was that good at all. All that I thought was that I tried to tell the truth.

~ Cornell Woolrich

It is an awesome tragedy in this life that, when asking what a person is and they reply doctor or lawyer or engineer, we don't say Well thats a nice little hobby, but why don't you take up writing or painting or music?

~ D.a. Botta

Like a father with his daughter, the writist plays peek-a-boo with the world. His aim is to evoke that sweet smile, the one that says i remember you. I am glad you are here again.

~ D.a. Botta

Ideally, love is unconditional; practically, it is more often the opposite.

~ T.f. Hodge

I have yet to find that one perfect phrase that epitomizes all the mysteries of the universe. Luckily, I doubt to ever pen it in this lifetime, for then the seeking ends; miserable is the day the adventure ends.

~ D.a. Botta

To write what you think is to think what you write. Leave those of hollow to their dust. They are but sorry things.

~ D.a. Botta

Sometimes just looking into a person's eyes can tell a graphic story and a brilliant novel if you have the ability to turn it into words.

~ L.l. Caulton

I am a writer. Imagining what someone would say or do comes to me as naturally as breathing.

~ Joan Didion

I wrote. I wrote all the things I couldn’t say to him. I wrote about how much I believed in us. I wrote about how much I trusted God. I wrote that I was praying for him. I wrote down all the jokes I could remember, which weren’t many.

~ Kimberly Novosel

Don't quit. It's very easy to quit during the first 10 years. Nobody cares whether you write or not, and it's very hard to write when nobody cares one way or the other. You can't get fired if you don't write, and most of the time you don't get rewarded if you do. But don't quit.

~ Andre Dubus

You know that you are a writer if you are imaginative. You know that you are a writer if you are curious. You know that you are a writer if you are interested in the things and people of the world. You know that you are a writer if you hold a minie ball in your hand and wonder about its story. You know that you are a writer if you like the sound of rain on the roof. And if you want to tell someone else about your heart and how waiting for the thunder sometimes makes you feel, if you work to find the words to do that, then you are a writer. --Maureen O'Toople in the short story Your Question for Author Here

~ Jon Scieszka

You have to follow your own voice. You have to be yourself when you write. In effect, you have to announce, 'This is me, this is what I stand for, this is what you get when you read me. I'm doing the best I can - buy me or not - but this is who I am as a writer.

~ David Morrell

...if you've got writer's block, you aren't empty - maybe it's just like Twitter - overwhelmed, and loading seems to be taking a while...

~ John Geddes

Criticism can never instruct or benefit you. Its chief effect is that of a telegram with dubious news. Praise leaves no glow behind, for it is a writer's habit to remember nothing good of himself. I have usually forgotten those who have admired my work, and seldom anyone who disliked it. Obviously, this is because praise is never enough and censure always too much.

~ Ben Hecht

Only the mediocre artist is always at his best.

~ Victor J. Banis

What a writer brought to a book didn't matter as much as what the reader contributed.

~ Lisa Morton

What a writer has to do is write what hasn't been written before or beat dead men at what they have done.

~ Ernest Hemingway

...when you're a writer, you become deeper and more uniquely distinct, the more you go inside yourself...

~ John Geddes

I have found that a writer is formed not so much by their experiences but by the way in which they view and capture those experiences.

~ Sophia Rose

...If I ever got sloppy and maudlin, it would be for the streets of my childhood—but no self- respecting writer should ever eulogize a slum...

~ John Geddes

On plenty of days the writer can write three or four pages, and on plenty of other days he concludes he must throw them away.

~ Annie Dillard

If Laura was so prolific with poems, and in truth she was, then what was the problem with Megan’s request? Couldn’t Laura, with a little doing, keep stringing together line after line of words and construct, in time, a novel? It seemed logical, but there was the matter of finding an idea and sustaining it. Only fire could do that. The fire of rebellion.Mario Vargas Llosa had not used the term “fire” exactly, but rather had discussed the presence of “seditious roots” that could “dynamite the world” the writer inhabited. He claimed that writing stories was an exercise in freedom and quarreling—out-and-out rebellion, whether or not the writer was conscious of it. And this rebellion, Vargas Llosa reminded his readers, was why the Spanish Inquisition had strictly censored works of fiction, prohibiting them for three hundred years in the American colonies.

~ L.l. Barkat

During the act of making something, I experience a kind of blissful absence of the self and a loss of time. When I am done, I return to both feeling as restored as if I had been on a trip. I almost never get this feeling any other way. I once spent sixteen hours making 150 wedding invitations by hand and was not for one instance of that time tempted to eat or look at my watch. By contrast, if seated at the computer, I check my email conservatively 30,000 times a day. When I am writing, I must have a snack, call a friend, or abuse myself every ten minutes. I used to think that this was nothing more than the difference between those things we do for love and those we do for money. But that can't be the whole story. I didn't always write for a living, and even back when it was my most fondly held dream to one day be able to do so, writing was always difficult. Writing is like pulling teeth. From my dick.

~ David Rakoff

Whatever you may have heard, self-publishing is not a short cut to anything. Except maybe insanity. Self-publishing, like every other kind of publishing, is hard work. You don’t wake up one morning good at it. You have to work for that.

~ Zoe Winters

Any writer who puts his words and thoughts out into the public is going to be criticized.

~ Thomas Moore

I'm a struggling writer, I'm struggling to convince people I'm a writer.

~ Tom Conrad