Writing Quotes by John Steinbeck

A good writer always works at the impossible.

— John Steinbeck

Give a critic an inch, he'll write a play.

— John Steinbeck

Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish.

— John Steinbeck

I nearly always write — just as I nearly always breathe.

— John Steinbeck

“A writer of stories is a liar.”

— John Steinbeck

In utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable.

— John Steinbeck

Poetry is the mathematics of writing and closely kin to music.

— John Steinbeck

I guess there are never enough books.

— John Steinbeck

The design of a book is the pattern of a reality controlled and shaped by the mind of a writer.

— John Steinbeck

The discipline of the written word punishes both stupidity and dishonesty.

— John Steinbeck

The craft of writing is the art of penetrating other minds with the figures that are in your own mind.

— John Steinbeck

I do want to make it very convincing. And the best way to do that is to put most of it in…

— John Steinbeck

“The good story lay in half-told things which must be filled in out of the hearer’s own experience.”

— John Steinbeck

Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do...Try to be better than yourself.

— John Steinbeck

I have written a great many stories and I still don't know how to go about it except to write it and…

— John Steinbeck

What some people find in religion a writer may find in his craft...a kind of breaking through to glory.

— John Steinbeck

“In utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable... The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most…

— John Steinbeck

Three hours of writing require twenty hours of preparation. Luckily I have learned to dream about the work, which saves me some…

— John Steinbeck

“To finish is a sadness to a writer- a little death. He puts the last word down and it is done. The…

— John Steinbeck

The ancient commission of the writer has not changed. He is charged with exposing our many grievous faults and failures, with dredging…

— John Steinbeck

The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to…

— John Steinbeck

I am writing this from what we Americans call Yurrp. In Yurrp writers are taken as seriously as Lana Turner's legs are…

— John Steinbeck

Writing to me is a deeply personal, even a secret function and when the product I turned loose it is cut off…

— John Steinbeck

A good writer always works at the impossible.There is another kind who pulls in his horizons, drops his mind as one lowers…

— John Steinbeck

I suffer as always from the fear of putting down the first line. It is amazing the terrors, the magics, the prayers,…

— John Steinbeck

When you collect marine animals there are certain flat worms so delicate that they are almost impossible to catch whole for they…

— John Steinbeck

A writer out of loneliness is trying to communicate like a distant star sending signals. He isn't telling or teaching or ordering.…

— John Steinbeck

I have taken as much as six years to prepare a book for writing. There is such a delirium of effort in…

— John Steinbeck

“I learned to write nice as hell. Birds an' stuff like that, too; not just word writin'. My ol' man'll be sore…

— John Steinbeck

If there is a magic in story writing, and I am convinced that there is, no one has ever been able to…

— John Steinbeck

“The writer is delegated to declare and to celebrate man's proven capacity for greatness of heart and spirit—for gallantry in defeat, for…

— John Steinbeck

“Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing…

— John Steinbeck

“A writer out of loneliness is trying to communicate like a distant star sending signals. He isn't telling, or teaching, or ordering.…

— John Steinbeck

“Maybe it’s like this, Max--you know how, when you are working on a long and ordered piece, all sorts of bright and…

— John Steinbeck

I start out to write five days a week, and then it runs to six days and finally seven. Then, eventually, that…

— John Steinbeck

“Literature is as old as speech. It grew out of human need for it and it has not changed except to become…

— John Steinbeck

The design of a book is the pattern of a reality controlled and shaped by the mind of the writer. This is…

— John Steinbeck

“The only good writer was a dead writer.”

— John Steinbeck

I nearly always write just as I nearly always breathe. - John Steinbeck

— John Steinbeck

The profession of book writing makes horse racing seem like a solid, stable business.

— John Steinbeck