Browse through our collection of quotes tagged with Authors & Writing.
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
When in doubt, delete it.
Philip Cosby
A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.
Virginia Woolf
Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.
Gene Fowler
Every writer hopes or boldly assumes that his life is in some sense exemplary, that the particular will turn out to be universal.
Martin Amis
Writing is the hardest way of earning a living, with the possible exception of wrestling alligators.
Olin Miller
It was a folly, with the materiality of this daily life pressing so intrusively upon me, to attempt to fling myself back into another age; or to insist on creating a semblance of a world out of airy matter . . . This wiser effort would have been, to diffuse thought and imagination through the opaque substance of to-day, and thus make it a bright transparency . . . to seek resolutely the true and indestructible value that lay hidden in the petty and wearisome incidents and ordinary characters with which I was now conversant. The fault was mine. The page of life that was spread out before me was dull and commonplace, only because I had not fathomed its deeper import. A better book than I shall ever write was there . . . These perceptions came too late . . . I had ceased to be a writer of tolerably poor tales and essays, and had become a tolerably good Surveyor of the Customs. That was all.
Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
Marianne Williamson, A Return to
The writer must be universal in sympathy and an outcast by nature; only then can he see clearly.
Julian Barnes
Every human being has hundreds of separate people living under his skin. The talent of a writer is his ability to give them their separate names, identities, personalities and have them relate to other characters living with him.
Mel Brooks
Great writers are the saints for the godless.
Anita Brookner
Writing novels preserves you in a state of innocence -- a lot passes you by -- simply because your attention is otherwise diverted.
If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the Ode on a Grecian Urn is worth any number of old ladies.
William Faulkner
If I had not existed, someone else would have written me, Hemingway, Dostoevski, all of us.
I never know what I think about something until I read what I've written on it.
My own experience has been that the tools I need for my trade are paper, tobacco, food, and a little whisky.
The writer's only responsibility is to his art. He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one. He has a dream. Everything goes by the board: honor, pride, decency, security, happiness, all, to get the book written. If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the Ode on a Grecian Urn is worth any number of old ladies.
Democritus plucked his eye out because he could not look at a woman without thinking of her as a woman. If he had read a few of our novels, he would have torn himself to pieces.
Wallace Stevens
If Shakespeare had to go on an author tour to promote Romeo and Juliet, he never would have written Macbeth.
Joyce Brothers, On KNBR radio st
When I am dead, I hope it is said, 'His sins were scarlet, but his books were read'.
Hilaire Belloc
