Authors & Writing Quotes

But this I know; the writer who possesses the creative gift owns something of which he is not always master -- something that at times strangely wills and works for itself. If the result be attractive, the World will praise you, who little deserve praise; if it be repulsive, the same World will blame you, who almost as little deserve blame.

Charlotte Bronte

Beneath the rule of men entirely great,The pen is mightier than the sword.

Edward George BulwerLytton, Rich

It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by. How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment? for the moment passes, it is forgotten; the mood is gone; life itself is gone. That is where the writer scores over his fellows: he catches the changes of his mind on the hop. Growth is exciting; growth is dynamic and alarming. Growth of the soul, growth of the mind.

Vita SackvilleWest

Writing is a question of finding a certain rhythm. I compare it to the rhythms of jazz. Much of the time life is a sort of rhythmic progression of three characters. If one tells oneself that life is like that, one feels it less arbitrary.

Francoise Sagan

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.

Dorothy Parker

Writing is the continuation of politics by other means.

Philippe Sollers

The writer does the most good who gives his reader the most knowledge and takes from him the least time.

Sydney Smith

I would love to spend all my time writing to you; I'd love to share with you all that goes through my mind, all that weighs on my heart, all that gives air to my soul; phantoms of art, dreams that would be so beautiful if they could come true.

Luigi Pirandello

When the characters are really alive before their author, the latter does nothing but follow them in their action, in their words, in the situations which they suggest to him.

Luigi Pirandello

We do not write in order to be understood; we write in order to understand.

Cecil Day Lewis

Every writing career starts as a personal quest for sainthood, for self-betterment. Sooner or later, and as a rule quite soon, a man discovers that his pen accomplishes a lot more than his soul.

Joseph Brodsky

In sissy times, like these, one

Joseph Brodsky

Writers are always selling somebody out.

Joan Didion

Writers like teeth are divided into incisors and grinders.

Walter Bagehot

A writer and nothing else; a man alone in a room with the English language, trying to get human feelings right.

John K. Hutchens

If I were a writer, how I would enjoy being told the novel is dead. How liberating to work in the margins, outside a central perception. You are the ghoul of literature. Lovely.

Don DeLillo

Ultimately, literature is nothing but carpentry. With both you are working with reality, a material just as hard as wood.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

In America only the successful writer is important, in France all writers are important, in England no writer is important, and in Australia you have to explain what a writer is.

Geoffrey Cottrell

There's one good kind of writer -- a dead one.

James T. Farrell

Having been unpopular in high school is not just cause for book publications.

Fran Lebowitz