Writing Quotes · Page 339

Going off the road just leaves me more time to be a writer.

— Janis Ian

I love writing for myself. I read them [my stories], I cry over them sometimes.

— Grace Ogot

writers are desperate people and when they stop being desperate they stop being writers.

— Charles Bukowski

“A pen is not just a writing instrument, it's an object of creation.”

— Ayanda Xaba

I think of myself as a realistic writer, not a creator of soap opera or melodrama.

— Joyce Maynard

Our age has need of violence," he writes. And he is violence.

— Anais Nin

If I had not existed, someone else would have written me, Hemingway, Dostoevski, all of us.

— William Faulkner

“Believe none of what you hear. Half of what you see. And everything you write.”

— Jeph Loeb

I'm glad I understand that while language is a gift, listening is a responsibility. (U.S. poet and writer, 1943- )

— Nikki Giovanni

I was not encouraged to follow the career of a writer because my parents thought that I was going to starve to…

— Paulo Coelho

“We learn writing by doing it. That simple. We don’t learn by going outside ourselves to authorities we think know about it.”

— Natalie Goldberg

Stuart Rojstaczer writes with enormous wit, style and empathy, and The Mathematician's Shiva is a big-hearted, rollickingly funny novel that's impossible to…

— Molly Antopol

If you want to write the next great novel, but you think, No, this won't work because no one will buy it…

— John Tesh

I must have done everything I had. You go through years where you go through everything you've ever written

— Todd Barry

The way a small child might dream of visiting Disneyland, I dreamed of writing books. Never did I think my poems would…

— Rupi Kaur

Songwriting is a mysterious art. When I sit down to write a song, the end result should be mysterious and have this…

— Martin Gore

I wonder, when a writer's blocked and doesn't have any resources to pull himself out of it, why doesn't he jump in…

— Jim Harrison

I'm a big John Steinbeck fan. Cormac McCarthy. I've always loved the stories of regular people. Mark Twain, too. When you look…

— Lucas Neff

'The Immigrant Story,' which took me about twenty-five years to write, was a very simple story, but I couldn't think of how…

— Grace Paley

That's what a story must feel like to me. It's not, "I want to write about a gravedigger." But you're walking along…

— George Saunders

In my opinion, trying to guess what readers want is the wrong approach. You have to tell your story as best you…

— Jeannette Walls

“In time, most children stop being puzzled in this way. They settle in. The world around them, as it becomes familiar and…

— David Malouf

I write about life as it exists within houses and on the streets. And there's nothing, hopefully, in any of my characterizations…

— Richard Grossman

I'm writing and putting together my next few things. Even during the Red Army process, I've been writing and developing things, so…

— Gabe Polsky

I hated being a novelist when I was 20 - I had nothing to write about.

— A. S. Byatt

I like the challenge of writing music without being the coolest guy or band in the room.

— John Gourley

It would appear that I just love writing many different stories.

— Sarah Pinborough

Writing is a way of processing our lives. And it can be a way of healing.

— Jan Karon

I wish I was a great writer or a great journalist or a great scientist or a great artist; I'm not.

— Nicolas Berggruen

Rejections are painful, but inevitable. They're every writer's rite of passage.

— Octavia Butler

Being a writer is great because you get to come up with stuff.

— Courtney A. Kemp

I can only write what makes me laugh, and what makes me laugh is the comedy I grew up on.

— Brendan O'Carroll

I would never write about someone that forced me to write at a lower register than what I can write,

— Martin Amis

I thought that everyone would just think I was a bit of a joke as a writer.

— Georgia Toffolo

I don't write for any group. I write to bring about a change in consciousness.

— Jeanette Winterson

“Writing, long term, is mentally risky but vital culturally and contributes to a non-boring life.”

— Hazel Edwards

You're everything I write about in songs, but can never have." -Jax

— Abbi Glines

I never would start writing before midnight and I would finish at, like, seven in the morning.

— Fran Lebowitz

Most of my work consisted of crossing out. Crossing out was the secret of all good writing.

— Mark Haddon

I do not know what makes a writer, but it probably isn't happiness.

— William Saroyan