Writer Quotes

4019 Writer quotes by 2168 unique authors

Writers should avoid the academy. When a writer begins to accept pay for talking about words, we know what he will produce soon: nothing but… — Edward Abbey
The writer concerned more with technique than truth becomes a technician, not an artist. — Edward Abbey
When a writer has done the best that he can do, he should then withdraw from the book-writing business and take up an honest trade… — Edward Abbey
When the writer has done his best, he then should proceed to do his second best. — Edward Abbey
Style: There is something in too much verbal felicity (as in Joyce or Nabokov or Borges) that can betray the writer into technique for the… — Edward Abbey
Every writer has his favorite coterie of enemies: Mine is the East Coast literati -- those prep school playmates and their Ivy League colleagues. — Edward Abbey
Vladimir Nabokov was a writer who cared nothing for music and whose favorite sport was the pursuit, capture, and murder of butterflies. This explains many… — Edward Abbey
It is an author's most solemn obligation to honor truth. If the free and independent writer does not speak truth to power, who will? — Edward Abbey
A good writer must have more than vin rose in his veins, use more than Chablis for ink. — Edward Abbey
I have a healthy appetite for solitude. If you don't, you have no business being a writer. — Will Self
Why does the writing make us chase the writer? Why can't we leave well enough alone? Why aren't the books enough? — Julian Barnes
Don’t romanticise your ‘vocation’. You can either write good sentences or you can’t. There is no ‘writer’s lifestyle’. All that matters is what you leave… — Zadie Smith
I still have a suspicion of charity and think the state has a role to play in many areas. And although for most of the… — Kazuo Ishiguro
Every writer making a secondary world wishes in some measure to be a real maker, or hopes that he is drawing on reality: hopes that… — J.R.R. Tolkien
I want to be remembered most as a writer - one who entertained readers, and, hopefully, stretched their imagination as well. — Arthur C. Clarke
I never have [suffered writer’s block], although I’ve had books that didn’t work out. I had to stop writing them. I just abandoned them. It… — Margaret Atwood
Nearly everything seems a letdown after a writer has finished writing something. — John Irving
The stupidest thing that a writer can do is write a memoir I think, unless it's right before you die -- maybe. — Steve Earle
There are certain common privileges of a writer, the benefit whereof, I hope, there will be no reason to doubt; particularly, that where I am… — Jonathan Swift
The price a world language must be prepared to pay is submission to many different kinds of use. The African writer should aim to use… — Chinua Achebe
A writer has to true to him or herself. Period. That’s it! — Jhumpa Lahiri
You become writer by writing. It is a yoga. — R.K. Narayan
Had my credentials been in order I would never have become a writer. Had I been blessed with even limited access to my own mind… — Joan Didion
By and large, the critics and readers gave me an affirmed sense of my identity as a writer. You might know this within yourself, but… — Ralph Ellison
The highest duty of the writer, the composer, the artist, is to remain true to himself and to let the chips fall where they may. — John F. Kennedy

Who Wrote These Writer Quotes

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