Great Writers Quotes - Page 8

• I can well imagine that certain writers, even writers that we'd consider today very great writers, may not necessarily have tested highly on IQ just because of their numerical skills, or maybe they may not be very good at memory, and are not particularly good at these kinds of tests.

  Daniel Tammet

  Memories, Skills, May

  6 Copy quote

• All great writers have, of course, an atmosphere in which they seem most at their ease and at their best; a mood of the general mind which they interpret and indeed almost discover, so that we come to read them rather for that than for any story or character or scene of seperate excellence.

  Virginia Woolf

  Character, Atmosphere, Mind

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.2982, Delphi Classics

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• People always seek to compare. They can take the new, but only if it is somehow connected to the familiar. We need that in our lives, the mix of the new and the old. But of course I'm flattered about the comparison with Old man and the sea. Hemingway is a great writer.

  Yann Martel

  Men, Sea, People

  Interview, www.bookbrowse.com. October 2, 2002.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• When I was in law school I was taught that the great writers were people like [Oliver Wendell] Holmes Jr. and [Benjamin N.] Cardozo. But you go back and read their prose and it's sort of perfumed and very ornate and show-offy. And they're constantly striving for these abstractions that seem archaic nowadays.

  Jeffrey Rosen

  School, Law, People

  "What Would Brandeis Do?". "Amicus" with Dahlia Lithwick, www.slate.com. June 16, 2016.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• As a songwriter, I was influenced by David Bowie - a great writer. A class above everybody in so many ways. Lennon and McCartney, of course. Class stuff. David Cousins was my favorite lyricist.

  Rick Wakeman

  Cousin, Class, Stuff

  8 Copy quote

• The writer who cannot sometimes throw away a thought about which another man would have written dissertations, without worry whether or not the reader will find it, will never become a great writer.

  Georg C. Lichtenberg

  Writing, Men, Worry

  4 Copy quote

• I have never thought of myself as a good writer. Anyone who wants reassurance of that should read one of my first drafts. But I'm one of the world's great rewriters.

  James A. Michener

  Writing, World, Want

  40 Copy quote

• A man can write one book that can be great, but this doesn't make him a great writer-just the writer of a great book. . . I think a writer has to extend very widely, as well as plunge very deep, to be a great novelist.

  Anthony Burgess

  Book, Writing, Men

  Anthony Burgess, Earl G. Ingersoll, Mary C. Ingersoll (2008). “Conversations with Anthony Burgess”, p.61, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• I'm not a great writer. I'm a great rewriter.

  Paddy Chayefsky

  Writing

  9 Copy quote

• Deirdre Maddon has an extraordinary, almost celestial way of telling a story. There are so many great writers now - although I also want to go back and read all of Dickens again.

  Rebecca Miller

  Stories, Want, Way

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I'm just in profound gratitude that we get to go back and work on a show that we love, with amazing actors and great writers, and be a part of the Marvel universe. As with all of the characters in Jessica Jones, Trish has an alias.

  Rachael Taylor

  Gratitude, Character, Profound

  Source: collider.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• On a court full of great writers, I shouldn't say full of - there have been some bad writers on the court over the years.

  Dahlia Lithwick

  Years, Lost, Court

  "What Would Brandeis Do?". "Amicus" with Dahlia Lithwick, www.slate.com. June 16, 2016.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Farber had a huge effect on me as a writer. I don't mean I write like him. Farber is, first of all, a great stylist, a great writer. Anyone can read Manny Farber's film criticism, whether that person is a novelist, a poet, another critic, a historian, and learn a lot about writing by reading him.

  Greil Marcus

  Reading, Writing, Mean

  6 Copy quote

• The measure of a great writer is not how many weeks his books spend on the best-seller lists, but how many years his books remain in print after his death.

  Cal Thomas

  Book, Years, Lists

  5 Copy quote

• I am convinced that anyone can be a great writer . . . if he can only . . . tell the naked truth about himself and other people. That, a little technique with words and the willingness to bare heart, soul and body are really all it takes.

  Clive Barnes

  Heart, Soul And Body, People

  7 Copy quote

• I don't really think that writers, even great writers, are prophets, or sages, or Messiah-like figures; writing is a lonely, sedentary occupation and a touch of megalomania can be comforting around five on a November afternoon when you haven't seen anybody all day.

  Angela Carter

  Lonely, Writing, Thinking

  Angela Carter (1997). “Shaking a Leg: Journalism and Writings”, Vintage

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• Insofar as we, critics of the black tradition, master our craft, we serve both to preserve our own traditions and to shape their direction. All great writers demand great critics.

  Henry Louis Gates

  Black, Crafts, Demand

  Henry Louis Gates (1989). “Figures in Black: Words, Signs, and the "racial" Self”, p.54, Oxford University Press on Demand

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Johnson is wise, Boswell foolish; Johnson warns and abstains, Boswell plunges; Johnson is rather a great man writing than a greatwriter, Boswell is a great writer and an ordinary man; and they are two of a kind, abysmal melancholics and compulsive socializers, afraid of solitude and afraid of death and dissolution, victims of themselves, meant for each other, needing each other, needing evidence and arguments (Boswell is a lawyer, Johnson magisterially dictates to him some of his briefs), making beautiful models of rational discourse out of the useful substance of all they know.

  Marvin Mudrick

  Friendship, Beautiful, Wise

  4 Copy quote

• On one plane, the very great writers and the popular romancers of the lower order always meet. They use all of themselves, helplessly, unselectively. They are above the primness and good taste of declining to give themselves away.

  V. S. Pritchett

  Order, Giving, Use

  "The Tale Bearers: English and American Writers" by Random House, (p. 29), 1980.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The road to Hell is paved with unbought stuffed dogs.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Dog, Writing, Sisterhood

  Ernest Hemingway (2016). “The Sun Also Rises”, p.37, Hamilton Books

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Great writers know what to cut out. It's the same in life. Clear ambitions. Clear relationships. This is the stuff of good story.

  Donald Miller

  Ambition, Cutting, Stories

  Twitter post from Jun 17, 2015

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• When you got source material, whether it's a play or a book - a great writer often appreciates being adapted and developed. It's like when you go see a production of a great play and they are always different. There is always room for interpretation.

  Jude Law

  Book, Play, Appreciate

  "Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law On Set Interview SHERLOCK HOLMES: A GAME OF SHADOWS". Interview with Steve 'Frosty' Weintraub, collider.com. November 14, 2011.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I'm a strong believer that you have to have an equal opportunity to fail and to try things that are hard. I always tell my students, "Don't just take things that are easy for you. If you're really good at math, don't take just math. Take classes that make you write. If you're a really great writer, but bad at math, take math and make yourself work your way through it."

  Condoleezza Rice

  Strong, Writing, Math

  Source: www.glamour.com

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• If you really think back to the great writers, there's a lot of happiness in Tolstoy; there's a lot of love, there's childbirth, and there's dances. And likewise in Shakespeare and even Cervantes, there's a lot of celebrations of the positive manifestations of life. Technically, I found it harder to do, so that's kind of a good late-life challenge - without getting sentimental or chirpy.

  George Saunders

  Thinking, Challenges, Sentimental

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• I could never write about the sort of people John Cheever or John Updike or even Margaret Atwood write about. I don't mean I couldn't write as well as they do, which of course I couldn't; they're great writers, and I'm no writer at all. But I couldn't even write badly about normal, neurotic people. I don't know that world from the inside. That's just not my orientation.

  Jim Woodring

  Mean, Writing, People

  Interview with Ross Simonini, staging.believermag.com. 2008.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source