Writing By Writers Quotes

• The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Inspirational, Motivational, Teaching

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• Everywhere I go, I'm asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Education, Teacher, Women

  Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose "The Nature and Aims of Fiction" (1969)

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• Writers are always selling somebody out.

  Joan Didion

  Writing, Journalism, Selling

  Slouching towards Bethlehem (1968) p. xvi

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• I think I did pretty well, considering I started out with nothing but a bunch of blank paper.

  Steve Martin

  Funny, Writing, Humor

  FaceBook post by Steve Martin from Feb 29, 2012

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• If you are a genius, you'll make your own rules, but if not - and the odds are against it - go to your desk no matter what your mood, face the icy challenge of the paper - write.

  J. B. Priestley

  Writing, Odds, Challenges

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• We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Writing, Humility, Crafts

  "New York Journal-American" Newspaper, July 11, 1961.

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• It's none of their business that you have to learn how to write. Let them think you were born that way.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Business, Writing, Thinking

  "With Hemingway". Book by Arnold Samuelson, 1984.

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• Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing.

  Norman Mailer

  Book, Writing, Men

  1965 'Mr Mailer Interviews Himself', in the NewYork Times Book Review,17 Sep.

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• Success comes to a writer as a rule, so gradually that it is always something of a shock to him to look back and realize the heights to which he has climbed.

  P. G. Wodehouse

  Congratulations, Writing, Winning

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• A man will turn over half a library to make one book.

  Samuel Johnson

  Book, Writing, Men

  Quoted in James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791) (entry for 6 Apr. 1775)

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• If you don't have the time to read, you don't have the time or the tools to write.

  Stephen King

  Writing, Caring, Tools

  Stephen King (2000). “On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft”, p.174, Simon and Schuster

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• Nothing stinks like a pile of unpublished writing.

  Sylvia Plath

  Success, Writing, Stink

  Barry Kyle, Sylvia Plath (1976). “Sylvia Plath, a Dramatic Portrait: Conceived and Adapted from Her Writings, by Barry Kyle”

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• Most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of fifteen.

  Willa Cather

  Writing, Age, Fifteen

  Quoted in Rene¤ Rapin Willa Cather (1930).

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• 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 a book.

  Samuel Johnson

  Time, Powerful, Book

  Quoted in James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791) (entry for 6 Apr. 1775)

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• The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say.

  Anais Nin

  Inspirational Life, Memorable, Writing

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• I write for the same reason I breathe - because if I didn't, I would die.

  Isaac Asimov

  Life, Writing, Breathe

  Isaac Asimov (1995). “Yours, Isaac Asimov: A Lifetime of Letters”, Doubleday Books

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• If I waited for perfection... I would never write a word.

  Margaret Atwood

  Writing, Perfect, Writers Block

  FaceBook post by Margaret Atwood from May 05, 2014

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• The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas.

  Linus Pauling

  Motivational, Inspiring, Success

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• Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.

  Samuel Johnson

  Science, Belief, Favourite

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• You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.

  Saul Bellow

  Inspirational, Change, Inspiring

  "Bellow in his own words". www.theguardian.com. April 6, 2005.

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• The free-lance writer is a man who is paid per piece or per word or perhaps.

  Robert Benchley

  Writing, Men, Pieces

  James Thurber, The Bermudian Magazine, November 1950.

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• Writing is like prostitution. First you do it for love, and then for a few close friends, and then for money.

  Moliere

  Love, Funny, Money

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• You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

  Ray Bradbury

  Inspirational, Writing, Reality

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• I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions.

  James A. Michener

  Writing, Swings, Emotion

  Ernest Hemingway, James A. Michener (1986). “The dangerous summer”, Scribner Book Company

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• If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write, because our culture has no use for it.

  Anais Nin

  Writing, Commitment, Culture

  "Woman as Writer" by Jeannette L. Webber and Joan Grumman, (p. 38), 1978.

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