Browse through our collection of quotes tagged with Authors & Writing.
If writers were good businessmen, they'd have too much sense to be writers.
Irvin S. Cobb
The paperback is very interesting but I find it will never replace the hardcover book -- it makes a very poor doorstop.
Alfred Hitchcock
His style is chaos illumined by flashes of lightning. As a writer he has mastered everything except language.
Oscar Wilde
This morning I took out a comma and this afternoon I put it back in again.
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.
If you want to be a writer-stop talking about it and sit down and write!
Jackie Collins
Writers are a little below the clowns and a little above the trained seals.
John Steinbeck
The profession of book writing makes horse racing seem like a solid, stable business.
The task of an American writer is not to describe the misgivings of a woman taken in adultery as she looks out of a window at the rain but to describe four hundred people under the lights reaching for a foul ball. This is ceremony.
John Cheever
From reincarnated sources and through prenatal causes I was born with unquenchable hope and unfaltering faith in God and guardian spirits. I often wept myself to sleep after a day of disappointments and worries but woke in the morning singing aloud with the joy of life.I always expected wonderful things to happen to me. In some of my hardest days when everything went wrong with everybody at home and all my manuscripts came back for six weeks at a time without one acceptance, I recall looking out of my little north window upon the lonely road bordered with lonelier Lombardy poplars, and thinking,
Ella Wheeler Wilcox, reflecting
How people treat you is their karma; how you react is yours.
Wayne Dyer
I like to write when I feel spiteful. It is like having a good sneeze.
D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
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.
The shelf life of the modern hardback writer is somewhere between the milk and the yogurt.
Sir John Mortimer
As to the adjective, when in doubt strike it out.
Mark Twain
Write without pay until somebody offers to pay you. If nobody offers within three years, sawing wood is what you were intended for.
Most writers regard the truth as their most valuable possession, and therefore are economical in its use.
Why do writers write? Because it isn't there.
Thomas Berger
If any man wishes to write a clear style, let him first be clear in his thoughts.
Johann von Goethe
Every author in some degree portrays himself in his works, even if it be against his will.
