Writer Quotes by John Steinbeck

“The only good writer was a dead writer.”

— John Steinbeck

I guess there are never enough books.

— John Steinbeck

Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down.

— John Steinbeck

In utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable.

— John Steinbeck

“A writer of stories is a liar.”

— John Steinbeck

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

— John Steinbeck

A good writer always works at the impossible.

— John Steinbeck

We have to make a mark, even if it's only a scribble.

— John Steinbeck

Books ain't no good. A guy needs somebody - to be near him. A guy goes nuts if he ain't got nobody.

— John Steinbeck

“I was writing of something I did not know about, and it seems to me that in a so-called writer this is…

— John Steinbeck

The craft or art of writing is the clumsy attempt to find symbols for the wordlessness.

— John Steinbeck

A book is like a man - clever and dull, brave and cowardly, beautiful and ugly.

— John Steinbeck

I wrote The Grapes of Wrath in one hundred days, but many years of preparation preceded it.

— John Steinbeck

Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper.

— John Steinbeck

Books are the best friends you can have; they inform you, and entertain you, and they don't talk back.

— John Steinbeck

Writers are a little below clowns and a little above trained seals.

— John Steinbeck

Hard-covered books break up friendships. You loan a hard covered book to a friend and when he doesn’t return it you get…

— John Steinbeck

“When you are writing, you must treat it as the most important thing in the world, even when you know it is…

— John Steinbeck

“I will go so far as to say that the writer who is not scared is happily unaware of the remote and…

— 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

I write because I like to write. I find joy in the texture and tone and rhythm of words. It is a…

— John Steinbeck

Your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person-a real person you know,…

— John Steinbeck

Some people there are who, being grown; forget the horrible task of learning to read. It is perhaps the greatest single effort…

— John Steinbeck

The basic rule [of writing] given us was simple and heartbreaking. A story to be effective had to convey something from the…

— 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

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

— John Steinbeck

“Literature was not promulgated by a pale and emasculated critical priesthood singing their litanies in empty churches - nor is it a…

— John Steinbeck

...Samuel rode lightly on top of a book and he balanced happily among ideas the way a man rides white rapids in…

— John Steinbeck

A book is like a man - clever and dull, brave and cowardly, beautiful and ugly. For every flowering thought there will…

— 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

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

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

— John Steinbeck

Literature was not promulgated by a pale and emasculated critical priesthood singing their litanies in empty churches - nor is it a…

— John Steinbeck

“Your days are like pages, the chapters unread. You have to keep turning your book has no end.”

— 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

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

— John Steinbeck

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

— John Steinbeck

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

— John Steinbeck