No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money. Samuel Johnson
If you can’t annoy somebody, there’s little point in writing. Kingsley Amis
Manuscript: something submitted in haste and returned at leisure. Oliver Herford
Everywhere I go, I’m asked if the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don’t stifle enough of them. Flannery O’Connor
My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way. Ernest Hemingway
Every writer is a narcissist. This does not mean that he is vain; it only means that he is hopelessly self-absorbed. Leo Rosten
The waste basket is the writer’s best friend. Isaac Bashevis Singer
The difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean; not to affect your reader, but to affect him precisely as you wish. Robert Louis Stevenson
If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don’t listen to writers talking about writing or themselves. Lillian Hellman
Every great and original writer, in proportion as he is great and original, must himself create the taste by which he is to be relished. William Wordsworth
True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, as those who move easiest have learned to dance. Alexander Pope
The multitude of books is a great evil. There is no limit to this fever for writing. Martin Luther.
There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are. William Somerset Maugham
Writers may be disreputable, incorrigible, early to decay or late to bloom but they dare to go it alone. John Updike
Adapt your style, if you wish, to admit the color of slang or freshness of neologism, but hang tough on clarity, precision, structure, grace. William Safire
Say all you have to say in the fewest possible words, or your reader will be sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words or he will certainly misunderstand them. John Ruskin
Those who write clearly have readers, those who write obscurely have commentators. Albert Camus
To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it’s about, but the music the words make. Truman Capote
People do not deserve to have good writing, they are so pleased with bad. Ralph Waldo Emerson
The only end of writing is to enable the readers better to enjoy life or better to endure it. Samuel Johnson
The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything. Walter Bagehot
An author is a fool who, not content with boring those he lives with, insists on boring future generations. Montesquieu
A writer is someone who can make a riddle out of an answer. Karl Kraus
To write simply is as difficult as to be good. Somerset Maugham
How vain it is to sit down and write when you have not stood up to live. Henry David Thoreau
Everything that is written merely to please the author is worthless. Blaise Pascal
That’s not writing, that’s typing. Truman Capote (on Jack Kerouac)
You must keep sending work out; you must never let a manuscript do nothing but eat its head off in a drawer. You send that work out again and again, while you’re working on another one. If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success – but only if you persist. Isaac Asimov
It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn’t give it up because by that time I was too famous. Robert Benchley
The free-lance writer is a man who is paid per piece or per word or perhaps. Robert Benchley
There are three reasons for becoming a writer: the first is that you need the money; the second that you have something to say that you think the world should know; the third is that you can’t think what to do with the long winter evenings. Quentin Crisp
Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers. T S Eliot
Nothing you write, if you hope to be good, will ever come out as you first hoped. Lillian Hellman
Writing is the incurable itch that possesses many. Juvenal
One should never write down or up to people, but out of yourself. Christopher Isherwood
Advice to writers: Sometimes you just have to stop writing. Even before you begin. Stanislaus Lec
Writing a book of poetry is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo. Don Marquis
Writing is a difficult trade which must be learned slowly by reading great authors; by trying at the outset to imitate them; by daring then to be original; by destroying one’s first productions. Andre Maurois
A writer needs three things, experience, observation, and imagination, any two of which, at times any one of which, can supply the lack of the others. William Faulkner
You don’t write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say. F Scott Fitzgerald
Good writing can be defined as having something to say and saying it well. When one has nothing to say, one should remain silent. Silence is always beautiful at such times. Edward Abbey
I write when I’m inspired, and I see to it that I’m inspired at nine o’clock every morning. Peter de Vries
I love being a writer. What I can’t stand is the paperwork. Peter de Vries
Writing only leads to more writing. Colette
After being turned down by numerous publishers, he decided to write for posterity. George Ade
The only thing I was fit for was to be a writer, and this notion rested solely on my suspicion that I would never be fit for real work, and that writing didn’t require any. Russell Baker
Three hours a day will produce as much as a man ought to write. Anthony Trollope
The writer is either a practising recluse or a delinquent, guilt-ridden one; or both. Usually both. Susan Sontag
Writing is like prostitution. First you do it for love, and then for a few close friends, and then for money. Moliere (Jean Baptiste Poquelin)
There’s many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher. Flannery O’Connor
I write to discover what I think. Daniel J Boorstin
The only rule I have found to have any validity in writing is not to bore yourself. John Mortimer
It takes a lot of energy and a lot of neurosis to write a novel…If you were really sensible, you’d do something else. Lawrence Durrell
Novelists do not write as birds sing, by the push of nature. It is part of the job that there should be much routine and some daily stuff on the level of carpentry. William Golding
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
The economy of a novelist is a little like that of a careful housewife who is unwilling to throw away anything that might perhaps serve its turn. Graham Greene
A major character has to come somehow out of the unconscious. Graham Greene
If you know somebody is going to be awfully annoyed by something you write, that’s obviously very satisfying, and if they howl with rage or cry, that’s honey. A N Wilson
Any fool can write a novel but it takes real genius to sell it. J G Ballard
Given that external reality is a fiction, the writer’s role is almost superfluous. He does not need to invent the fiction because it is already there. J G Ballard
I am convinced that anyone can be a great writer…if he can only…tell the naked truth about himself and other people. Clive Barnes
The central problem of novel-writing is causality. Jorge Luis Borges
Writing long books is a laborious and impoverishing act of foolishness: expanding in five hundred pages an idea that could be perfectly explained in a few minutes. A better procedure is to pretend that those books already exist and to offer a summary, a commentary. Jorge Luis Borges
Great writers are the saints for the godless. Anita Brookner
The hard necessity of bringing the judge on the bench down into the dock has been the peculiar responsibility of the writer in all ages of man. Nelson Algren
If there is a special Hell for writers it would be in the forced contemplation of their own works. John Dos Passos
My two fingers on a typewriter have never connected with my brain. My hand on a pen does. A fountain pen, of course. Ball-point pens are only good for filling out forms on a plane. Graham Greene
The fact is that all writers create their precursors. Their work modifies our conception of the past, just as it is bound to modify the future. Jorge Luis Borges
I’m writing a book. I’ve got the page numbers done. Stephen Wright
One man is as good as another until he has written a book. Benjamin Jowett
I find that most people know what a story is until they sit down to write one. Flannery O’Connor
Solitude and quiet are highly desirable, but the lack of them is no barrier to writing…The will to work builds all the seclusion that one needs. John Braine
A good beginning means a good book. John Braine
There isn’t, unfortunately, any way of discovering whether you can write a publishable novel except by writing it. John Braine
The qualities of a second-rate writer can easily be defined, but a first-rate writer can only be experienced. It is just the thing in him which escapes analysis that makes him first-rate. Willa Cather
If writers were good businessmen, they’d have too much sense to be writers. Irvin S Cobb
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
Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go. E L Doctorow
Writers are always selling somebody out. Joan Didion
Planning to write is not writing. Outlining, researching, talking to people about what you’re doing, none of that is writing. Writing is writing. E L Doctorow
Writers who have nothing to say always strain for metaphors to say it in. Florence King
The writer who can’t do his job looks to his editor to do it for him, though he won’t dream of sharing his royalties with that editor. Alfred A Knopf
A real writer learns from earlier writers the way a boy learns from an apple orchard – by stealing what he has a taste for and can carry off. Archibald MacLeish
The difference between writing a book and being on television is the difference between conceiving a child and having a baby made in a test tube. Norman Mailer
Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing. Norman Mailer
Almost anyone can be an author; the business is to collect money and fame from this state of being. A A Milne
Writing is like getting married. One should never commit oneself until one is amazed at one’s luck. Iris Murdoch
Style and Structure are the essence of a book; great ideas are hogwash. Vladimir Nabokov
If you are a writer you locate yourself behind a wall of silence and no matter what you are doing, driving a car or walking or doing housework – you can still be writing, because you have that space. Joyce Carol Oates
You become a writer because you need to become a writer – nothing else. Grace Paley
For me, poetry is an evasion of the real job of writing prose. Sylvia Plath
It is less the business of the novelist to tell us what happened than to show how it happened. V S Pritchett
Nothing stinks like a pile of unpublished writing. Sylvia Plath
All writers – all people – have their stores of private and family legends which lie like a collection of half-forgotten, often violent toys on the floor of memory. V S Pritchett
I don’t ask writers about their work habits. I really don’t care. Joyce Carol Oates says somewhere that when writers ask each other what time they start working and when they finish and how much time they take for lunch, they’re actually trying to find out, ‘Is he as crazy as I am?’ I don’t need that question answered. Philip Roth
Writers and politicians are natural rivals. Both groups try to make the world in their own images; they fight for the same territory. Salman Rushdie
I have always noticed that in portraits of really great writers the mouth is always firmly closed. Gertrude Stein
Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else. Gloria Steinem
As for work, without it, without painstaking work, any writer or artist definitely remains a dilettante; there’s no point in waiting for so-called blissful moments, for inspiration; if it comes, so much the better – but you keep working anyway. Ivan Turgenev
Writing is always personal in some way but not always in a direct way. Suzanne Vega
You get ideas from daydreaming. You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time. The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we’re doing it. Neil Gaiman
Writers don’t write from experience, although many are hesitant to admit that they don’t…If you wrote from experience, you’d get maybe one book, maybe three poems. Writers write from empathy. Nikki Giovanni
Writing is one art where people fool themselves into thinking it’s easier than it is. Tobias Wolff
The parody is the last refuge of the frustrated writer. Parodies are what you write when you are associate editor of the Harvard Lampoon. The greater the work of literature, the easier the parody. The step up from writing parodies is writing on the wall above the urinal. Ernest Hemingway
Writing is not a profession, but a vocation of unhappiness. Georges Simenon
Good writers are those who keep the language efficient. That is to say, keep it accurate, keep it clear. Ezra Pound
My own experience has been that the tools I need for my trade are paper, tobacco, food, and a little whisky. William Faulkner
Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about. W H Auden