Writers Quotes

A written man is more porous and accessible than a live one.

~ Christopher Bram

It’s often said that writers sometimes need to go around the block a few times to get where they’re going.

~ Christopher Bram

An author is similar to an actor. They play many characters in their lives—photographer, nurse, dancer, doctor, writer, etc. As an author, you have to learn your craft, know each and every element to become that character you’re writing about to be able to live and breathe what they do.

~ Mischa Temaul

Great writers experience their dreams. They put them on paper, where others can read about them.

~ Ellen J. Barrier

We need to stop trying to get attention by seeing who can scream and cry the loudest. Write something worth reading and your voice will be heard.

~ Teresa Mummert

Love is benign only when it gets what it wants. Otherwise love can be far more destructive than mindless sex.

~ Christopher Bram

Sometimes we need fellow radicals to remind us of what we, as writers, have set out to proclaim.

~ Michael Graves

Ginsberg was the favourite bohemian poet of straight college boys who wanted to transgress, and of gay college boys who were not yet ready to come out.

~ Christopher Bram

Yet while Vidal writes best about power, politics, and history White’s strengths are sex, art and – sometimes – love. Each tends to stumble when he enters the other’s domain.

~ Christopher Bram

When my father first took me to Ennis Library I went down among the shelves and felt company, not only the company of writers, but the readers too, because they had lifted and opened and read these books. The books were worn in a way they can only get worn by hands and eyes and minds

~ Niall Williams

To translate a poem from thinking into English takes all night.

~ Grace Paley

Writers have a well-deserved reputation for being eccentric. Everything you've heard is true.

~ Sara Sheridan

Many writers make the mistake of making their readers appear like Lazarus, without any iota of care, throwing down books to readers to crunch as if they are dogs.

~ Michael Bassey Johnson

There are as many different kinds of books as there are writers - as many different responses as there are readers.

~ Sara Sheridan

Everyone assumes writers spend their time lounging around, writing and occasionally striking a pose whilst having a think.

~ Sara Sheridan

I think it's incomparably sweet when someone writes something for you.. even if it doesn't rhyme or even if it isn't very amorous.. even two lines of hatred written for you acknowledges the fact that someone spent a little of his time thinking about you.

~ Sanhita Baruah

Being able to read well in public and talk about your work in an engaging fashion is part of most writers' job specification.

~ Sara Sheridan

If you write without reading, you will certainly have too many books without readers.

~ M.f. Moonzajer

The very qualities that make one a writer in the first place contribute to the block: hypersensitivity, stubbornness, insatiability, and so on. Given the general oddity of writers, no wonder there are no sure cures.

~ John Gardner

I hope that, whatever happens within the publishing industry, because of the increased control writers have of their own careers, better sales information and the advent of the internet, that ultimately this change in our working environment will be a change for the better.

~ Sara Sheridan

Writing the same kind of material is no guarantee you'll be working from the same ethos so that writers from different fields are just as likely to have an understanding of each other's work as someone working in the same genre.

~ Sara Sheridan

Writing is such a solitary occupation that it takes a long time to build up a group of professional peers with whom you genuinely identify.

~ Sara Sheridan

The new contract between writers and readers is one I'm prepared to sign up to. I've met some fascinating people at events and online. Down with the isolation of writers I say! And long live Twitter.

~ Sara Sheridan

To write a good book, you must read one book for each page of the book you are about to write.

~ M.f. Moonzajer

It's always been important for writers to be disciplined but now even more so. In addition to the traditional displacement activities like cleaning the fridge or eating cake writers are faced with a plethora of online possibilities (some of which may be professionally worthwhile as well as interesting and fun). As a writer it's important to learn how to focus so you can do both as and when you need to.

~ Sara Sheridan

Crime writers, I've noticed, can be jumpy. They live in a world where there are murderers on the loose and they haven't been caught yet!

~ Sara Sheridan

Writers are, as a profession, nothing if not eccentric.

~ Sara Sheridan

While in England write or get wrought rotten rusted.

~ Aporva Kala

99% of natural poets discovered their talents through love letters.

~ Michael Bassey Johnson

People can think only in images. If you want to be a philosopher, write novels.

~ Albert Camus

Write at a pace that doesn't surpass your creative flow. Don't be hasty; don't be sloppy. Don't forfeit impressive writing for an impressive word count. Because eventually it will all have to be edited, and you'll find that it is harder to make bad writing good than to make good writing better.

~ Richelle E. Goodrich

An author really ought to have nothing but flowers in the room where he works.

~ Gaston Leroux

Our business is communication oftentimes through the medium of stories but our capacity has a far greater scope - to entertain certainly, but also to stimulate debate, to mark up changes and differences and that way, to maybe, just now and then, to change the world.

~ Sara Sheridan

Writers need each other.

~ Sara Sheridan

I'd never be where I am if more successful writers hadn't taken an interest in me and done me a good turn.

~ Sara Sheridan

When a writer first begins to write, he or she feels the samefirst thrill of achievement that the young gambler or oboeplayer feels: winning a little, losing some, the gambler sees theglorious possibilities, exactly as the young oboist feels an indescribablethrill when he gets a few phrases to sound like realmusic, phrases implying an infinite possibility for satisfactionand self-expression. As long as the gambler or oboist is onlyplaying at being a gambler or oboist, everything seems possible.But when the day comes that he sets his mind on becoming a professional, suddenly he realizes how much there is to learn, how little he knows.

~ John Gardner

One of Scotland's most important cultural exports - stories.

~ Sara Sheridan

Many existing top 20 Scottish writers have flourished in part because of good turns done by institutions, arts community, libraries and bookshops.

~ Sara Sheridan

Scotland consistently produces world-class writers.

~ Sara Sheridan

Writers are a product of where we come from but by looking at alternatives to the culture in which we live, we can find ways to change and hopefully improve it.

~ Sara Sheridan