Authors & Writing Quotes

Browse through our collection of quotes tagged with Authors & Writing.

The responsibility of a writer is to excavate the experience

The responsibility of a writer is to excavate the experience of the people who produced him.

Authors & Writing

Any writer, I suppose, feels that the world into which he wa

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.

Authors & Writing

If a nation loses its storytellers, it loses its childhood.

If a nation loses its storytellers, it loses its childhood.

Authors & Writing

All great novels, all true novels, are bisexual.

All great novels, all true novels, are bisexual.

Authors & Writing

A novel that does not uncover a hitherto unknown segment of

A novel that does not uncover a hitherto unknown segment of existence is immoral. Knowledge is the novel's only morality.

Authors & Writing

In all pointed sentences, some degree of accuracy must be sa

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

Authors & Writing

Composition is, for the most part, an effort of slow diligen

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.

Authors & Writing

I know not, Madam, that you have a right, upon moral princip

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

Authors & Writing

The writing of the wise are the only riches our posterity ca

The writing of the wise are the only riches our posterity cannot squander.

Walter Savage Landor

Authors & Writing

Educating a son I should allow him no fairy tales and only a

Educating a son I should allow him no fairy tales and only a very few novels. This is to prevent him from having 1. the sense of romantic solitude (if he is worth anything he will develop a proper and useful solitude) which identification with the hero gives. 2. cant ideas of right and wrong, absurd systems of honor and morality which never will he be able completely to get rid of, 3. the attainment of ideals, of a priori desires, of a priori emotions. He should amuse himself with fact only: he will then not learn that if the weak younger son do or do not the magical honorable thing he will win the princess with hair like flax.

Lionel Trilling

Authors & Writing

A writer is dear and necessary for us only in the measure of

A writer is dear and necessary for us only in the measure of which he reveals to us the inner workings of his very soul.

Authors & Writing

Writing is more than anything a compulsion, like some people

Writing is more than anything a compulsion, like some people wash their hands thirty times a day for fear of awful consequences if they do not. It pays a whole lot better than this type of compulsion, but it is no more heroic.

Authors & Writing

Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always t

Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about.

Authors & Writing

Many books require no thought from those who read them, and

Many books require no thought from those who read them, and for a very simple reason; they made no such demand upon those who wrote them.

Charles Caleb Colton

Authors & Writing

I'm simply the happiest, the placidest, when I'm writing, an

I'm simply the happiest, the placidest, when I'm writing, and so I suppose that that, for me, is the final answer. ... It's fine therapy for people who are perpetually scared of nameless threats as I am most of the time.

Authors & Writing

I get a fine warm feeling when I'm doing well, but that plea

I get a fine warm feeling when I'm doing well, but that pleasure is pretty much negated by the pain of getting started each day. Let's face it, writing is hell.

Authors & Writing

The good writing of any age has always been the product of s

The good writing of any age has always been the product of someone's neurosis, and we'd have a mighty dull literature if all the writers that came along were a bunch of happy chuckleheads.

William Styron, interview, Write

Authors & Writing

The circumstance which gives authors an advantage above all

The circumstance which gives authors an advantage above all these great masters, is this, that they can multiply their originals; or rather, can make copies of their works, to what number they please, which shall be as valuable as the originals themselves.

Joseph Addison, "in the Spectato

Authors & Writing

When writing about transcendental issues, be transcendentall

When writing about transcendental issues, be transcendentally clear.

Authors & Writing

I no more thought of style or literary excellence than the m

I no more thought of style or literary excellence than the mother who rushes into the street and cries for help to save her children from a burning house, thinks of the teachings of the rhetorician or the elocutionist.

Harriet Beecher Stowe, on writin

Authors & Writing