• A Writermust teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid.

  W

  William Cowper

  PoetBritish1731 · 18th century

  4.0 · 48 votes · 39 reads

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• A Writerneeds three things, experience, observation, and imagination, any two of which, at times any one of which, can supply the lack of the others.

  W

  William Cowper

  PoetBritish1731 · 18th century

  3.5 · 18 votes · 134 reads

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• After all, most writing is done away from the typewriter, away from the desk. I'd say it occurs in the quiet, silent moments, while you're walking or shaving or playing a game, or whatever, or even talking to someone you're not vitally interested in.

  

  Henry Miller

  AuthorAmerican1891 · 19th century

  4.8 · 8 votes · 99 reads

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• All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.

  A

  Anonymous

  3.8 · 25 votes · 29 reads

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• All the world knows me in my book, and may book in me.

  M

  Montaigne

  PhilosopherFrench1533 · 16th century

  3.8 · 50 votes · 144 reads

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• An author is often obscure to the reader because they proceed from the thought to expression than like the reader from the expression to the thought.

  

  Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux

  PoetFrench1636 · 17th century

  4.3 · 12 votes · 111 reads

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• An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmasters of ever afterwards.

  A

  Anonymous

  3.1 · 25 votes · 162 reads

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• An author who speaks about his own books is almost as bad as a mother who talks about her own children.

  

  Benjamin Disraeli

  PoliticianBritish1804 · 19th century

  3.6 · 34 votes · 99 reads

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• Analogies, it is true, decide nothing, but they can make one feel more at home.

  

  Seneca

  PhilosopherRoman-4 · 1st century BC

  3.1 · 61 votes · 21 reads

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• Any man who can write a page of living prose adds something to our life, and the man who can, as I can, is surely the last to resent someone who can do it even better. An artist cannot deny art, nor would he want to. A lover cannot deny love.

  

  Raymond Chandler

  WriterAmerican1888 · 19th century

  3.2 · 19 votes · 39 reads

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• Any writer, I suppose, feels that the world into which he was born is nothing less than a conspiracy against the cultivation of his talent.

  J

  James Baldwin

  WriterAmerican1924 · 20th century

  3.8 · 50 votes · 83 reads

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• As I take up my pen I feel myself so full, so equal to my subject, and see my book so clearly before me in embryo, I would almost like to try to say it all in a single word.

  G

  Georg C. Lichtenberg

  ScientistGerman1742 · 18th century

  4.4 · 8 votes · 21 reads

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• As to the adjective, when in doubt strike it out.

  

  Mark Twain

  WriterAmerican1835 · 19th century

  4.1 · 28 votes · 5 reads

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• Books choose their authors; the act of creation is not entirely a rational and conscious one.

  S

  Saint Thomas Aquinas

  TheologianRoman1224 · 13th century

  4.7 · 10 votes · 192 reads

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• Composition is, for the most part, an effort of slow diligence and steady perseverance, to which the mind is dragged by necessity or resolution, and from which the attention is every moment starting to more delightful amusements.

  

  Samuel Johnson

  AuthorBritish1709 · 18th century

  4.9 · 10 votes · 196 reads

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• Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.

  

  Benjamin Franklin

  PoliticianAmerican1706 · 18th century

  3.6 · 49 votes · 46 reads

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• Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings so that you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for.

  

  Sir Thomas Browne

  AuthorEnglish1605 · 17th century

  4.3 · 17 votes · 181 reads

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• Essential characteristic of the really great novelist: a Christ-like, all-embracing compassion.

  A

  Arnold Bennett

  NovelistEnglish1867 · 19th century

  4.4 · 59 votes · 91 reads

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• Every author in some degree portrays himself in his works, even if it be against his will.

  

  Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

  PoetGerman1749 · 18th century

  3.7 · 20 votes · 155 reads

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• Every secret of a writer's soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written large in his works.

  

  Vincent van Gogh

  PainterDutch1853 · 19th century

  3.3 · 50 votes · 136 reads

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• Every Writer''creates'' his own precursors. His work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify the future.

  

  Jorge Luis Borges

  WriterArgentinian1899 · 19th century

  5.0 · 13 votes · 102 reads

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• Footnotes - little dogs yapping at the heels of the text

  

  William Hazlitt

  EssayistBritish1778 · 18th century

  3.0 · 37 votes · 169 reads

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• For a country to have a great Writeris like having another government. That's why no régime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones.

  A

  Alexander Solzhenitsyn

  NovelistRussian1918 · 20th century

  3.7 · 38 votes · 148 reads

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• For a creative Writerpossession of the ''truth'' is less important than emotional sincerity.

  

  George Orwell

  NovelistBritish1903 · 20th century

  4.2 · 61 votes · 9 reads

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• From my close observation of writers... they fall into two groups: those who bleed copiously and visibly at any bad review, and those who bleed copiously and secretly at any bad review.

  

  Isaac Asimov

  ScientistAmerican1920 · 20th century

  3.4 · 44 votes · 92 reads

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• From the point of view of literature Mr. Kipling is a genius who drops his aspirates. From the point of view of life, he is a reporter who knows vulgarity better than any one has ever known it.

  

  Oscar Wilde

  PoetIrish1854 · 19th century

  3.4 · 32 votes · 102 reads

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• Give me a condor's quill! Give me Vesuvius crater for an inkstand!

  H

  Herman Melville

  WriterAmerican1819 · 19th century

  3.7 · 18 votes · 3 reads

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• Good sense is both the first principal and the parent source of good writing.

  

  Horace

  PoetRoman-65 · 1st century BC

  4.5 · 58 votes · 110 reads

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• Good writers are those who keep the language efficient. That is to say, keep it accurate, keep it clear.

  E

  Ezra Pound

  PoetAmerican1885 · 19th century

  4.4 · 10 votes · 79 reads

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• Habits in writing as in life are only useful if they are broken as soon as they cease to be advantageous.

  

  W. H. Auden

  PoetEnglish1907 · 20th century

  3.5 · 24 votes · 107 reads

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• He is outside of everything, and alien everywhere. He is an aesthetic solitary. His beautiful, light imagination is the wing that on the autumn evening just brushes the dusky window.

  H

  Henry James

  AuthorAmerican-British1843 · 19th century

  3.6 · 60 votes · 75 reads

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• He who cannot limit himself will never know how to write.

  N

  Nicola Abbagnano

  PhilosopherItaly1901 · 20th century

  3.5 · 43 votes · 200 reads

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• He who does not expect a million readers should not write a line.

  

  Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

  PoetGerman1749 · 18th century

  4.8 · 64 votes · 187 reads

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• His style is chaos illumined by flashes of lightning. As a Writerhe has mastered everything except language.

  

  Oscar Wilde

  PoetIrish1854 · 19th century

  5.0 · 19 votes · 32 reads

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• How people treat you is their karma; how you react is yours.

  W

  Walter Benjamin

  PhilosopherGerman1892 · 19th century

  3.1 · 27 votes · 56 reads

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• How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.

  

  Henry David Thoreau

  PoetAmerican1817 · 19th century

  3.9 · 54 votes · 144 reads

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• I am paid by the word, so I always write the shortest words possible.

  

  Bertrand Russell

  PhilosopherBritish1872 · 19th century

  4.3 · 49 votes · 176 reads

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• I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil.

  

  Thomas Paine

  EducatorEnglish1737 · 18th century

  3.5 · 10 votes · 44 reads

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• I first had the idea of writing a popular book about the universe in 1982. My intention was partly to earn money to pay my daughter's school fees.

  

  Stephen Hawking

  PhysicistEnglish1942 · 20th century

  4.5 · 22 votes · 159 reads

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• I hate the actor and audience business. An author should be in among the crowd, kicking their shins or cheering them on to some mischief or merriment.

  

  D. H. Lawrence

  WriterEnglish1885 · 19th century

  4.8 · 33 votes · 140 reads

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• I have the conviction that excessive literary production is a social offence.

  

  George Eliot

  WriterBritish1819 · 19th century

  4.7 · 30 votes · 85 reads

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• I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can.

  

  Ernest Hemingway

  WriterAmerican1899 · 19th century

  4.1 · 21 votes · 20 reads

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• I have written a book. This will come as quite a shock to some. They didn't think I could read, much less write.

  

  George W. Bush

  PoliticianAmerican1946 · 20th century

  3.5 · 62 votes · 136 reads

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• I hold any Writersufficiently justified who is himself in love with his theme.

  H

  Henry James

  AuthorAmerican-British1843 · 19th century

  3.3 · 44 votes · 120 reads

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• I know not, Madam, that you have a right, upon moral principles, to make your readers suffer so much.

  

  Samuel Johnson

  AuthorBritish1709 · 18th century

  4.9 · 21 votes · 186 reads

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• I like to write when I feel spiteful. It is like having a good sneeze.

  

  D. H. Lawrence

  WriterEnglish1885 · 19th century

  3.8 · 52 votes · 67 reads

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• I love being a writer, what I can't stand is the paperwork.

  

  Peter Abelard

  TheologianFrench1079 · 11th century

  4.1 · 63 votes · 109 reads

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• I make no complaint. I am a writer. I do not accept my condition; I will strive to change it; but I inhabit it, I am trying to learn from it.

  S

  Saint Thomas Aquinas

  TheologianRoman1224 · 13th century

  3.0 · 43 votes · 140 reads

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• I never know what I think about something until I read what I've written on it.

  W

  William Cowper

  PoetBritish1731 · 18th century

  3.6 · 39 votes · 24 reads

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• I think it's bad to talk about one's present work, for it spoils something at the root of the creative act. It discharges the tension.

  N

  Niels Bohr

  PhysicistDanish1885 · 19th century

  3.3 · 63 votes · 166 reads

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• I was in a queer mood, thinking myself very old: but now I am a woman again - as I always am when I write.

  

  Vincent van Gogh

  PainterDutch1853 · 19th century

  4.6 · 6 votes · 30 reads

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

  

  Isaac Asimov

  ScientistAmerican1920 · 20th century

  5.0 · 21 votes · 99 reads

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• I write in order to attain that feeling of tension relieved and function achieved which a cow enjoys on giving milk.

  

  Henry Louis Mencken

  JournalistAmerican1880 · 19th century

  4.3 · 34 votes · 55 reads

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• If any man wishes to write a clear style, let him first be clear in his thoughts.

  

  Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

  PoetGerman1749 · 18th century

  4.5 · 51 votes · 33 reads

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• If I don't write to empty my mind, I go mad. As to that regular, uninterrupted love of writing. I do not understand it. I feel it as a torture, which I must get rid of, but never as a pleasure. On the contrary, I think composition a great pain.

  

  Lord Byron

  PoetBritish1788 · 18th century

  4.7 · 63 votes · 156 reads

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• If I had more time I would write a shorter letter.

  

  Blaise Pascal

  PhilosopherFrench1623 · 17th century

  4.1 · 46 votes · 157 reads

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• If I had not existed, someone else would have written me, Hemingway, Dostoevski, all of us.

  W

  William Cowper

  PoetBritish1731 · 18th century

  3.8 · 49 votes · 12 reads

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• If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster.

  

  Isaac Asimov

  ScientistAmerican1920 · 20th century

  3.1 · 26 votes · 154 reads

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• If you wish to be a writer; write!

  

  Epictetus

  PhilosopherGreek55 · 1st century

  3.7 · 11 votes · 40 reads

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• If you're going to write, don't pretend to write down. It's going to be the best you can do, and it's the fact that it's the best you can do that kills you.

  D

  Dorothy Parker

  WriterAmerican1893 · 19th century

  4.4 · 23 votes · 75 reads

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• In all pointed sentences, some degree of accuracy must be sacrificed to conciseness.

  

  Samuel Johnson

  AuthorBritish1709 · 18th century

  4.2 · 34 votes · 93 reads

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• In general I do not draw well with literary men - not that I dislike them but I never know what to say to them after I have praised their last publication.

  

  Lord Byron

  PoetBritish1788 · 18th century

  3.5 · 30 votes · 13 reads

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• It is excellent discipline for an author to feel that he must say all that he has to say in the fewest possible words, or his readers is sure to skip them.

  

  John Ruskin

  WriterEnglish1819 · 19th century

  4.3 · 12 votes · 176 reads

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• It is extremely important to me to write for children.

  

  Stephen Hawking

  PhysicistEnglish1942 · 20th century

  4.2 · 20 votes · 102 reads

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• It requires more than mere genius to be an author.

  

  Jean de la Bruyère

  French1645 · 17th century

  3.7 · 47 votes · 197 reads

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• It's very hard to be a gentleman and a writer.

  

  W. H. Auden

  PoetEnglish1907 · 20th century

  3.0 · 21 votes · 170 reads

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• Justice to my readers compels me to admit that I write because I have nothing to do; justice to myself induces me to add that I will cease to write the moment I have nothing to say.

  

  Charles Caleb Colton

  AuthorBritish1780 · 18th century

  3.9 · 16 votes · 67 reads

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• Let those who would write heroic poems make their life an heroic poem.

  

  John Milton

  PoetEnglish1608 · 17th century

  5.0 · 31 votes · 89 reads

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• Let your literary compositions be kept from the public eye for nine years.

  

  Horace

  PoetRoman-65 · 1st century BC

  4.5 · 62 votes · 36 reads

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• Like all writers, he measured the achievements of others by what they had accomplished, asking of them that they measure him by what he envisaged or planned.

  

  Jorge Luis Borges

  WriterArgentinian1899 · 19th century

  3.4 · 28 votes · 141 reads

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• Making a book is a craft, like making a clock; it needs more than native wit to be an author.

  

  Jean de la Bruyère

  French1645 · 17th century

  3.0 · 55 votes · 34 reads

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• Most authors steal their works, or buy.

  

  Alexander Pope

  PoetEnglish1688 · 17th century

  3.4 · 52 votes · 74 reads

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• Most writers regard the truth as their most valuable possession, and therefore are economical in its use.

  

  Mark Twain

  WriterAmerican1835 · 19th century

  4.5 · 14 votes · 170 reads

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• Mr. Faulkner, of course, is interested in making your mind rather than your flesh creep.

  C

  Clifton Fadiman

  WriterAmerican1904 · 20th century

  3.0 · 19 votes · 166 reads

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• My idea is always to reach my generation. The wise Writerwrites for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmasters of ever afterward.

  A

  Anonymous

  4.9 · 35 votes · 132 reads

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• Never write anything that does not give you great pleasure. Emotion is easily transferred from the Writerto the reader.

  

  Joseph Joubert

  French1754 · 18th century

  5.0 · 34 votes · 88 reads

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• Never write on a subject until you have read yourself full of it.

  

  Jean Paul

  ComedianGerman1763 · 18th century

  3.5 · 19 votes · 174 reads

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• No one who cannot limit himself has ever been able to write.

  N

  Nicola Abbagnano

  PhilosopherItaly1901 · 20th century

  4.7 · 20 votes · 133 reads

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• No pen, no ink, no table, no room, no time, no quiet, no inclination.

  

  James Joyce

  AuthorIrish1882 · 19th century

  3.8 · 57 votes · 140 reads

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• No poet or novelist wishes he were the only one who ever lived, but most of them wish they were the only one alive, and quite a number fondly believe their wish has been granted.

  W

  W. C. Fields

  ComedianAmerican1880 · 19th century

  3.3 · 19 votes · 92 reads

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