Best Writer Wisdom

4019 Writer quotes by 2168 unique authors

We cannot educate white women and take them by the hand. Most of us are willing to help but we can't do the white woman's… — Gloria E. AnzaldÃºa
The most durable thing in writing is style, and style is the most valuable investment a writer can make with his time. It pays off… — Raymond Chandler
The habit of writing clearly soon comes to the writer who is a severe critic to himself. — Anthony Trollope
I am opposed to writing about the private lives of living authors and psychoanalyzing them while they are alive. Criticism is getting all mixed up… — Ernest Hemingway
In company with people of your own trade you ordinarily speak of other writers' books. The better the writers the less they will speak about… — Ernest Hemingway
The writer is one who, emnbarking upon a task, does not know what to do. — Donald Barthelme
But novels are never about what they are about; that is, there is always deeper, or more general, significance. The author may not be aware… — Diane Johnson
The beginning of human knowledge is through the senses, and the fiction writer begins where the human perception begins. He appeals through the senses, and… — Flannery O'Connor
At the beginning of their careers many writers have a need to overwrite. They choose carefully turned-out phrases; they want to impress their readers with… — Jorge Luis Borges
My eyes glaze over at a writer solving tiny problems. — Doris Grumbach
Sometimes language gets in the way of the story's feelings. The reader finds himself experiencing the language of the story rather than the story. The… — Leonard Michaels
You need a good editor because every writer thinks he can write a War and Peace, but by the time he gets it on paper,… — Samuel Johnson
When a new writer defends his "style," the teacher smiles (or cringes) because real style isn't an artifice. Real style - voice - arrives on… — Bill Roorbach
Being a real writer means being able to do the work on a bad day. — Norman Mailer
The only certainty about writing and trying to be a writer is that it has to be done, not dreamed of or planned and never… — Janet Frame
A writer is a controlled schizophrenic. — Edward Albee
They believe that if they do get published, a wonderful new life is in store. It will turn out that deep down they are really… — Anne Lamott
That's one thing I like about Hollywood. The writer is there revealed in his ultimate corruption. He asks no praise, because his praise comes to… — Raymond Chandler
The responsibility of a writer is to excavate the experience of the people who produced him. — James A. Baldwin
Some years ago, not long after I moved to Los Angeles from New York, I attended a television industry party. When a man asked my… — Carol Muske-Dukes
There are few things, apparently, more helpful to a writer than having once been a weird little kid. — Katherine Paterson
The fiction writer has to engage in a continual examination of conscience. He has to be aware of the freak in himself. — Flannery O'Connor
The reason I'm here today, the reason I own a brand new Harley-Davidson motorcycle and the reason I have a big log cabin and I… — Dan Aykroyd
We want to be famous as a writer, as a poet, as a painter, as a politician, as a singer, or what you will. Why?… — Harry Crews
What obsesses a writer starting out on a lifetime's work is the panic-stricken search for a voice of his own. — John Mortimer

Who Wrote These Writer Quotes

2,168 authors contributed a total of 4,019 Writer Quotes, led by these top contributors: